NBC News Story On Police Shooting Misses The Mark

An NBC News story on the police shooting of a man in Florida provides a good example of why some people charge the mainstream media with racism.

The headline of the story about the death of drummer Corey Jones reads, "Florida Plainclothes Officer Shoots Dead Armed Musician Corey Jones."

Notice: not, "Musician Corey Jones" - "Armed Musician Corey Jones."

The story is accompanied by a photo of Jones, with a caption describing him as "Corey Jones, a well-known local drummer, who was armed..."

The person who wrote the headline and the person who wrote the photo caption (assuming they are separate people) both went beyond what the story, by reporter Jacquellena Carrero, actually tells us.

Here's the opening paragraph:

Police in Florida have launched an independent investigation after a plainclothes officer shot dead a well-known local drummer — who police say was armed — while he sat in his car on a highway exit ramp. (emphasis mine)

There is a difference - a big difference - between NBC News noting that the police say Jones was armed, and NBC saying directly that Jones was armed. The second thing, which the headline and the photo caption do, states the police assertion as an established fact.

But in fact, the accuracy of the police assertion has not been well-established. The incident is under investigation.

At best, the headline and photo caption are sloppy; at worst, they are racist, buying into assumptions about the dangerousness of Black men.

I'm inclined to go with sloppy, because while I know there's a lot of racism out there, I believe there is even more sloppiness.

In any case, the account begs for more questions to be asked and answered. Questions like, "Did Jones even own a gun?" and "Did Jones threaten to shoot?" (having a gun is one thing, pointing it is another) and "Did Officer Raja identify himself as a police officer when approaching Jones's car?"

If I were waiting for a tow late at night, alone...
if I had a gun...
if an unfamiliar car - not a tow truck - pulled up...
and if an unknown man got out and approached me without identifying himself...
I might well have pointed my gun toward the guy in an effort to make him keep his distance.

The story doesn't say whether or not Officer Raja was in a police vehicle. A CBS report says that he was in an unmarked car, not equipped with a dashcam. With no video and no known witnesses, there's no one to dispute Raja's story.

But that does not entitle NBC News to uncritically parrot it in a headline and a photo caption.

Come on, NBC - do better.

(P.S. to CBS - could you not obtain a single photo of Raja other than one of him receiving a medal?)

UPDATE: NBC did do better. The descriptions of Corey Jones as "armed" have disappeared.

A Mother's Quatrain - In Response To The Responses To The Responses To #FreddieGray

I WISH TO HIGH HEAVEN THAT POLICE OFFICERS IN AMERICA WOULD STOP BRUTALLY KILLING AMERICAN CITIZENS.

BUT WHEN THEY DO, I wish that media would give parents of the victims the space to grieve,

BUT SINCE THEY DON'T, I wish that people would not expect the grieving parents to suddenly become diplomats, emissaries of the outside world to their grieving communities. to tell them how wrong they are to express their grief - and their rage - in certain ways.

BUT SINCE THEY DO, THEN I WISH TO HIGH HEAVEN THAT A PARENT WOULD SAY, JUST ONCE, FOR ALL THE CAMERAS AND THE MICROPHONES...

something like:

I know y'all are hoping that something I say
will help to keep people from rioting today.
But I don't care if they burn all of it down.
My child is worth more than this whole damn town.

(P.S. - I call it "A Mother's Quatrain" because it was a mother's image that came to me. But I would be glad to hear a father say it, as well.)

****************
After I hit "publish," and auto-scheduled tweets to share this, the following lines came to me, as something the parent might say to those who challenge or question the above:

I used to be meek, and I've always been mild.
But what would you say if it was your child?

And that, I think, would end the interview. 

How To Become Dumber In 20 Minutes Or Less

I have spent my entire life trying to become smarter. Today, I have learned definitively that not only can one become dumber, one can do so in 20 minutes!

Imagine the possibilities! What could you do if you were dumber? You could delay productive activity indefinitely while struggling to make sense of an infinite number of matters, NONE OF WHICH INVOLVE YOU.

By what marvelous magic, what wonderful wizardry, might this scarcely-imaginable state be attained, you ask?

The answer, my friends, is so simple that it will amaze you, and yet, so profound that I truly ought to charge a princely sum for sharing it.

You can become dumber simply by attending to Internet journalism.

I can hear your likely first response: "Pshaw! What does this fellow mean? How can journalism delivered via the Internet make people dumber? Is not the very enterprise of journalism devoted to making people smarter? And is not the Internet the greatest system for the dissemination of information in the history of the world? Pshaw and fiddlesticks!!"

Ah, but you misunderstand. When I say "Internet journalism," I do not mean journalism delivered via the Internet; I mean journalism made possible by the Internet, journalism that could not exist without the Internet, a type of journalism that cries out for its own name, so distinct is it from anything that has gone before.

And Internet journalism made me dumber today. Here is how it happened.

A Facebook friend posted a link to an article from Gawker, with the headline, "Django Unchained Actress Accosted by LAPD After Kissing White Husband." Please check it out - it's short.

I read it, and found it exasperatingly incomplete. It quotes an LAPD email:  "...a citizen made a 911 call complaining that a male and female were 'involved in indecent exposure inside a Silver Mercedes with the vehicle door open.' The responding sergeant and police officers believed Danièle Watts and Brian James Lucas fit their description..." But it doesn't say whether Watts and Lucas were in fact the subjects of the original complaint.

Were they in a silver Mercedes? Were they doing more than kissing? Gawker doesn't say. Neither does the account by Variety which Gawker uses as source material. (A primary characteristic of Internet jounalism, vs. journalism delivered via the Internet, is that it requires no actual reporting: it thrives on merely citing other media outlets, without caring those outlets' trustworthiness.) 

I googled Watts' name and saw that a long list of media had stories about the incident. I chose to read the Washington Post's because I trusted the Post most.

After reading it, I trust the Post less. (Take a look, it's short)

First, because WaPo early refers to Lucas, not as Watts' husband, but as her "partner." If that is accurate, then Gawker's headline - the headline, for crying out loud - is inaccurate. On the other hand, if Gawker got it wrong, then WaPo got it wrong. The net effect was that the two articles together left me confused me about a basic fact of the story.

Second, because of this:

Lucas told TMZ that the couple was “making out in a parked car” outside CBS television studios, where Watts had just had a meeting. 

...which presented me with two problems - a) the very phenomenon of The Washington Post citing TMZ, and b) the phrase "making out," which in my mind means more than the kissing stated in Gawker's HEADLINE. (Watts' FB post says "showing affection," which could mean anything.).

So I went to the TMZ story (go ahead, it's short), and the first thing I saw was that the headline refers to a "white BF." Yep, in TMZ, Lucas is neither Watts' husband nor partner, he's her boyfriend.

Then, while it says that the couple were making out, it does not say that Lucas told them that. So how did WaPo reach that conclusion?

And it was after I had spent some 20 minutes reading three articles that I realized I had become dumber.

Before reading them, I merely didn't know that either Watts or Lucas existed (I saw "Django Unchained," but did not pay enough attention to the credit to notice Watts' name). Now I don't know whether Lucas is Watts' husband, partner or boyfriend. I don't know whether or not they were in a silver Mercedes. I don't know whether they were merely kissing or making out. I don't know whether or not they were in fact the subjects of the 911 call. I read three articles, and do not know the basic facts of the story that they are all about.

And that, friends, is the absolute miracle of Internet journalism.

But wait, there's more! More articles, that is, as this story heads into its sixth day in the 24-hour news cycle:

I'm not reading any of them. I do not need to become one whit dumber.

Building a billion-dollar enterprise, 21: a new media experiment

This evening's update on my work to build Luminaria Productions into a billion-dollar enterprise:

1. I promoted last night's BBDE post via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and G+.

2. I also promoted last night's Homewood Nation story about TechShop coming to Homewood Library, via Facebook and Twitter.

I did all of that by noon or so, on the belief that people might be more likely to browse social media then during lunch. I also used my new spreadsheet to keep track of what I had posted where.

According to Google, "ReVisions" had 3 pageviews today, after 77 on Monday, 59 on Tuesday, and 42 on Wednesay.

According to Clicky, Homewood Nation had 59 visitors today, with an average time per visit of 1 min, 31 secs. That would include people who visited to read about Shimira Williams...

3. I wrote a story about Shimira Williams creating and registering a new hashtag for people to share and find information about local youth activities - #youth 412.

The last gave me special pleasure, and I consider it especially important, because it was, as I said to Shimira, "a new media experiment."

We were chatting on Facebook, and at 2:45, I got the idea of doing a story about the hashtag. I asked if I could interview her, right there on Facebook, she agreed (with the caveat that she was multitasking), and we were off.

The chat itself served as notes, and I began writing while we spoke. At the end of our convo, she sent me a pic of herself to use.

At 4:35, I posted the first link to the completed article on Facebook, quickly following with posts on Twitter and G+.

It's not great journalism. But I'm certain that it is the fastest story I have ever done. And I think it is also serviceable, as opposed to being downright bad. It accomplishes the not-grand purpose of sharing a little bit of information that some people might find useful.

And it even has two - not one, but two - pictures.

I am downright proud of having reported, written and published a serviceable story in less than two hours. The better I get at producing serviceable stuff faster - the better.

This post marks the beginning of me tracking visitors/pageviews on a daily basis. First results don't look good for my use of LinkedIn to promote my content. Is the very title, "Building a billion dollar enterprise" off-putting for that audience? How can I make this more interesting and useful?

Thoughts for another day.

The thrill is gone

I think something inside me died Thursday night.

My wife and I were in the living room, watching "Rock Center," having tuned in for their story on Scientology. A commercial came on about planned news coverage of President Obama's second inauguration on Monday, and she said, ""We have to watch that."

I responded with something less than a shrug, and she said,

"You don't care." And I said,

"He's going to put his hand on a Bible and make a promise that he won't keep, and nobody will even care that he doesn't keep it."

And as I heard myself say that, it felt like something inside me had died. A few days ago, in response to the suicide of Aaron Swartz, I said that in future elections, I don't expect either the Republican or the Democrat party to offer a presidential candidate who will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

I guess what died Thursday was the illusion that either party had done so in the last election.

Or the one before that.

Or the one before that...

And with it died the imagining that the press might press a president on his constitutional duty toward the Constitution.

I don't know what my political life will look like going forward. I do know that it will not look like November 4, 2008, when the outcome of an election made me feel glad and proud. 

The fast and the spurious

Kevin Clash, who has provided the voice for Sesame Street's beloved Elmo character for 20+ years, has resigned in the wake of sex allegations, the New York Times has reported.

The story, which first broke last Monday, has not been a big one, so don't feel bad if you've missed it. But it has been a fast-moving one.

Mon., Nov. 11 - an anonymous 24-year-old man accuses Clash of having had a sexual relationship with him when he was 16.

Tues., Nov. 12 - the accuser recants as part of a settlement for $125,000, saying through his attorney that "his sexual relationship with Mr. Clash was an adult consensual relationship."

Mon., Nov. 18 - the accuser, Sheldon Stephens, goes public to recant the recantation, saying that he was pressured into signing the settlement, that he was indeed 16 rather than 18 when he and Mr. Clash became intimate, and that he would give the $125,000 back to clear his name (from what?).

Today - a second man, Cecil Singleton, accuses Mr. Clash of having had sex with him when he was underage. Mr. Clash resigns.

The coverage of the story is interesting, if discouraging for those who view gossip sites like TMZ with disdain.

First, because non-traditional media are kicking mainstream media's butt. As of 12:27, the New York Times update on the story reads:

Mr. Clash was first accused last week of sexual improprieties by a 24-year-old man who later recanted. That man has remained anonymous.

Hey, Times - Mr. Stephens stopped being anonymous yesterday. Not only his name, but images of his face (and body - he's a model) are all over the place.

Second, because with all of the coverage being generated, no one seems to be asking an obvious question. It seems clear that Kevin Clash had a relationship with Sheldon Stephens. The accusation-recantation-recantation recantation sequence leaves it unclear whether Mr. Stephens was 16 or 18 at the time.

The overlooked question is, "What is the age of the consent?"

Mr. Stephens is said to be living in Pennsylvania; if he was living here when the relationship happened, then guess what? Both the accusation and the recantation could be true, because in Pennsylvania a 16-year-old can have an adult, consensual relationship - 16 is the age of consent. 

I find it astonishing that no one covering the story regarding legal actions seems to be asking whether or not Mr. Clash violated any laws.

So while the New York Times is showing itself to be slow, TMZ and other sites with the story so far are showing themselves to be sloppy.

The fact that I don't see anyone handling this story well so far makes me afraid to trust them for bigger, more complicated stories.

As it happens, I just watched this morning, this clip of Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show," with Fox News' Chris Wallace, in which Mr. Stewart says of the Times, "I think their bias is towards sensationalism and laziness." I have learned to take sensationalism as so much of a given that it doesn't bother me much. Laziness does.

What do you think? Is there some bad journalism going on here re the Kevin Clash story, or am I off my gourd?

Renewing my energy for energy. And for my whole life.

It has been a year and nine months since I left my job as an energy reporter at the Post-Gazette. Since then, I have read very little about energy. Just now, while flipping through the current issue of The Economist, I came across a story about how financial firms that engage in energy trading are beginning to resist fines from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

And I read it. Just out of interest. Just for fun.

And it was interesting, and it was fun, to read about FERC, and Constellation Energy, and regional transmission organizations.

Which makes me feel that I could get back into energy reporting as a freelancer. Which would help me to feel like that all the relationships I established within the industry during my time at the PG, and all that I learned, would not be going totally to waste.

I need to make better use of all the stuff that has accumulated in my brain during my 60 years on this rock. Freelance energy reporting might be a good start. In fact, writing about energy on Homewood Nation might be the best start.

Memo to myself: generate a list of energy-related, Homewood-based story ideas.

**************

Meanwhile, I am going to invent a phrase: self-mining.

Self-mining means digging into oneself and extracting value from everything that one finds. Or at least, digging into oneself with that intention.

The value may be in lessons learned. The value may be in something marketable. The value may be in relationships forgotten, but renewable. At the core of self-mining is that the proposition that it's all worth something, somehow. Self-mining is first and foremost about honoring one's life.

I want to excel at self-mining. I mean, it wouldn't do for the guy who invented the term to suck at it, right?

So here's a question for me to work with: What parts of my life have I tended to disregard or to think little of, and how might they be valuable?

The answers of the moment are "energy journalism" and "I could resume it as a freelancer."

It will be interesting to see what other answers I come up with.

What about you? What experiences, skills, relationships, knowledge are you sitting on that you haven't used lately?

An October glimpse of American spring? - Postscript

I call B.S. on America's mainstream media.

On Tuesday, CNN.com ran a story by Tom Cohen with the headline, "Campaign enters final stretch as Obama takes final debate."

Here's the opening:

"Three debates down. Two weeks of campaigning to go.

President Barack Obama put Republican challenger Mitt Romney on the defensive on foreign policy in the final presidential debate Monday night, with analysts and an immediate poll giving Obama the victory."

That is B.S.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post's coverage of Monday night's Obama-Romney debate included a piece by Dan Balz and David Nakamura, with this headline: "Obama keeps Romney on his heels in last debate."

The Balz/Nakamura story includes this paragraph:

"The final debate concluded a gripping series of encounters between the two candidates that shook up the campaign as dramatically as any recent series of debates. Romney used the first debate to greatest advantage with an aggressive performance that contrasted to a lackluster evening for the president. Obama rebounded in the second debate, which was marked by sharp and testy exchanges between the two candidates, but not so much as to reverse the gains Romney had made."

That, too, is B.S.

The New York Times' Tuesday editorial, headlined "The final debate," opened thusly:

"Mitt Romney has nothing really coherent or substantive to say about domestic policy, but at least he can sound energetic and confident about it. On foreign policy, the subject of Monday night’s final presidential debate, he had little coherent to say and often sounded completely lost. That’s because he has no original ideas of substance on most world issues, including Syria, Iran and Afghanistan."

B.S., B.S., B.S.

These stories are all B.S. for one simple reason: Monday night's debate was not the last debate. It was not the final debate. More explicitly, it was not the final debate between presidential candidates. On Tuesday night, 24 hours after the debate that mainstream media called "last" and "final," there was another presidential debate, moderated by Larry King and featuring, not two, but FOUR presidential candidates: Rocky Anderson (Justice Party), Virgil Goode Jr. (Constitutional Party), Gov. Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party), and Jill Stein (Green Party).

Tuesday night's debate was sponsored by Free and Equal Elections, a nonprofit whose stated mission is "to reform federal, state and local elections, making it easier for candidates to get on ballots and ensure all ballot qualified candidates are included in various forums and debates."

Monday night's debate was sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a nonprofit formed by the Republican and Democrat parties.

I won't rehash what I've already written about the history of presidential debates, and the CPD's exclusion of third-party candidates. The point of this post is to note the degree to which the press has cooperated with them in that exclusion, with the result being B.S.

On a purely journalistic level, describing Monday night's meeting between Messrs. Obama and Romney as the last or final presidential debate when there was a presidential debate happening Tuesday night, is inexcusably sloppy.

Now get this: after Tuesday night's debate, Free and Equal Elections asked for a vote on who should participate in a SECOND debate. The top two candidates will square off next Tuesday, October 30, at 9 pm Eastern, in Washington DC.

Don't expect to view that debate, or to learn about it, by way of media who have already said that Monday's debate was the "last" or "final" one. But you can prepare to view it bookmarking Free and Equal.

Meanwhile, here is what you missed Tuesday night. Please notice that not only does this debate feature candidates you may not have heard of - it also includes questions, from everyday people, that journalists seem afraid to ask. (I will spare you a whole essay about questions that are not being asked in the CPD debates.)

Do you think these candidates (whether you agree with them or not) deserve to be heard? Do the questions here deserve to be asked?

Where am I? What am I doing?

I am strangely positioned these days. Or to put it more precisely, I am in a position which seems strange to me.

I am publisher of "Homewood Nation," which I have most commonly described as a community news website.

I am chair of the Save Race Street Committee, a block association for my street, composed of residents who are bound and determined to make our street better.

I am chair of Block Watch Plus, a monthly gathering of all of Homewood's block associations, as well as individuals who are not members of block associations but who simply want to do positive things on their street, or who already are.

I am on the board of Operation Better Block Inc., which is the non-profit agency that assists residents in forming block associations and stands behind Block Watch Plus (somewhere, Block Watch Plus is described as a program of Operation Better Block).

I am co-founder of Creative Local, which has an agreement with Operation Better Block for OBB to act as our fiscal agent in receiving funds for "Hidden Gems: The Architecture of Homewood."

The Save Race Street Committee, Operation Better Block and Creative Local are all in the news, and Block Watch Plus has the strong potential to be.

Holding these positions inevitability places me at the intersection of news and PR, and raises the question of which I am doing, when. When I participate in something that I believe to be newsworthy, and I write about it, is that news or PR?

When I reach out to the media for coverage, is that...ok, no need to ask...

But if they write about it, and then I write about the fact that they wrote about it, what is that?

Finally, do my memberships in all these groups compromise my ability to write about them?

I believe that it has, but not in the way that may seem most obvious. I already did a post on Homewood Nation about this; here, I am trying to think things through a little more.

The journalistic compromise that most people might expect is a refusal/failure to report news that reflects negatively on any of the groups with which I am involved.

What I have been more strongly aware of is the refusal/failure to report even news that reflects positively on said groups, because I am not comfortable writing about stuff that I am involved with. I would rather leave myself out, and I would definitely rather not be photographed.

But my rathers are rather irrelevant. More important is that people deserve to know about some of the stuff I am doing (none of it by myself, by the way, so it's not as though when I write about it, I am merely writing about myself).

In order to become a more thorough journalist, I need to become a better blogger. That is, I need to report more fully on my own life in order to report more thoroughly on OBB, SRSC, BWP and CL. For starters.

I think I reported more fully on my own life in the early days of "My Homewood." But the more that I moved  from the "pure observer" end of the participant-observer spectrum toward the "pure participant" end, the more uncomfortable I became with describing events that involved me.

Gotta get past that. I am doing things that are important to Homewood. People deserve to know.

Having said all that, not every story or post will involve a group that I am part of, but readers should be able to know about those affiliations every time they read. So I need to list them somewhere on "Homewood Nation," and probably make some basic statement of beliefs.

When one does not even feign objectivity, transparency goes a long away - especially when joined with thoroughness and accuracy (which, again, require that I write about myself sometimes. Oh, well.).

For any journalists or citizen journalists out there - or people just committing acts of journalism, without any particular title - do you ever find yourself "strangely positioned?" What ethical challenges do you face, and how do you navigate them?

Building a billion-dollar enterprise, 5

Just for the record, I have felt like crap today.

I think it started with a Facebook post, and the responses to it. The post included a link to WTAE's story about the Wheel Mill, the indoor bike park coming to Homewood.

Actually, two of my FB friends posted the link, and in each case, the status was followed by a long string of responses.

Meanwhile, I wrote a story about the bike park TWO WEEKS AGO for Homewood Nation, and only one person has responded.

And that one person's response was more than the vast majority of my Homewood Nation stories get. Most Homewood Nation stories get no responses. None. No indication that anyone, anywhere, is reading.

The people who posted the link to the WTAE story are Facebook friends, so unless they are blocking me (which they have every right to do), my status linking to the Homewood Nation story showed up in their news feeds on April 25. So...I'm doing original reporting, I'm linking to the stories from Facebook, and my Facebook friends are not reading Homewood Nation, and when WTAE reports on something that I wrote about two weeks ago, it's news to them.

That stinks.

(a half-hour or more later, still aching...)

I feel like Homewood Nation doesn't matter.

But I know that it does.

It matters because Homewood matters. Because the people of Homewood matter. And any and every thing that I can do to help the people of Homewood to get accurate information about what is happening in their world, matters.

Neighborhood journalism matters. It matters enough to deserve better promotion that I have ever given it.

It matters enough to deserve a staff.

It matters enough to deserve money.

Right now, it's either quit, or get better. I feel like quitting.

Building a billion-dollar enterprise means, it's time to get better.

Two questions for my Facebook friends

I just posted the following on Facebook, and I'm sharing it here to enhance (I hope) the likelihood of getting responses:

Hi everyone - just curious... 

I created my Facebook account a couple of years ago because it was one of the hot new things that journalists were being encouraged to use (the other one was Twitter). I'm still here because so many other people are here, so it seems like it should be an effective way to share information.

But I don't like it.

I'm not saying that I hate it, although I might have said that at one time. Just that I don't like it. When I log in to Facebook, it is because it seems necessary, not because I enjoy it.

But the way that Facebook keeps growing tells me that I must be missing something. Maybe it's just the way that I use it that prevents me from enjoying it the way others do. Maybe other people see something - or lots of somethings - that I don't.

I'm willing to learn, so I'm asking:

What do you LIKE most about Facebook?
What do you DISLIKE most about Facebook?

 Thanks for any and all responses!

Part of my issue may be that I don't use Facebook the way some people (lots of people, apparently) do. At PsychCentral.com, senior news editor Rick Nauert writes about a study by Kevin Wise, an assistant professor of strategic communication at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, of "How People Use Facebook.":

Wise categorized participants’ actions into two different groups: social browsing and social searching. (italics mine)

He defines social browsing as navigating the site without a targeted goal in mind. Wise says people use social browsing when they survey the general landscape, such as their newsfeed or wall, without looking for specific information. 

Wise defines social searching as searching the social networking site with the goal of finding certain information about a specific person, group, or event.

Wow. I don't think I've ever used Facebook to find information, other than using it to find out whether or not someone is on Facebook. Otherwise, the idea of using Facebook to find information strikes me as bizarre.

Wise found that participants tended to spend much more time on social searching than social browsing. Not only did participants spend more time on social searching, but they seemed to enjoy it more as well.

“We found a more positive response from participants during social searching, or when they had homed in on a particular target,” Wise said.

“Ultimately, it appears that Facebook use is largely a series of transitions between browsing the environment, then focusing in on something interesting or relevant.”

So, maybe I will find Facebook more interesting if I learn to use it as a source - like the 48 percent of young Americans who find out about news through Facebook.

Meanwhile, I need to explore more of Facebook's features. Two features that I do not expect to find would make Facebook much more appealing to me.

1. I wish Facebook had chatrooms. I miss the dynamic of sharing a screen with a dozen or more people, friends and strangers alike, who share an interest in a given topic. I developed friendships with people that way. I just learned that Facebook has the ability to create chatrooms, through groups. Gotta try that out. 
2. I wish I could filter my feed(s) by topic. When I go online, I am generally not looking to see what people I know are doing; I am generally looking for topic-related information.

Maybe I'll drop a bug in Mark Zuckerberg's ear about those ideas. Does the Hacker Way include paying close attention to user feedback?

A reminder to myself.

I am preparing to lead a class tomorrow at the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation's Frank Bolden Urban Journalism Workshop, on writing ledes. So I've been compiling examples of good and bad ledes, and thinking about how to get the kids to think about how to tell the difference. And a link led me sideways (because the Web is all about going sideways) to a piece titled, "The war on leisurely leads and anecdote addiction."

In it, Bob Baker describes an experiment by the New York Times, wherein they formed an in-house focus group of 10 journalists and had them evaluate the quality of the paper's writing over a 10-day period.

And just as I was getting into the story, this thought popped into my head: I love journalism.

It took me quite by surprise. I would have expected to hear myself say something like, "I really enjoy journalism." I enjoy reporting (on a sufficiently interesting topic). I enjoy writing. And I really enjoy deadlines - I love knowing that come a certain time, what I'm working on will be done. And I enjoy reader feedback.

Hey wait, I just used the L-word again. And now that I think of about it, I enjoy reporting a lot, and maybe I do love it. And I definitely do love to write, although a great deal of the time it scares me witless. I love the chase, the quest for the right words and the right ordering of the words to make facts sing. I have not captured the right words quite that way nearly often enough. But I still love the chase.

And perhaps most importantly I love the fact that journalism done well is important.

I left the Post-Gazette to continue doing journalism with "Homewood Nation." But in making myself editor and publisher, without colleagues, I put myself in a position where it is too easy to drift, led astray by every distraction.

Time to remember what I'm here for. To tell stories.

Casey + me = 0

For perhaps the past month, one of my primary commitments has been to ignore the Casey Anthony case.

I read no articles about her. I watched no TV stories about her. The occasional glimpse of a headline was unavoidable, as were tweets and Facebook posts, so I know that she was accused of killing her daughter, and that she was found not guilty. But that's pretty much all I know about the case.

I ignored the case for three reasons:

1) I consider it irrelevant to my life. I could not see how the outcome of the case would have any impact, one way or the other, on my world. I try not to give a lot of attention to things that do not have anything to do with my world.

2) I couldn't do anything about it. I also try to minimize the attention that I give to things that I can't do anything about. I couldn't do anything about Casey Anthony's case.

3) I do not find crime interesting. I acknowledge its existence, and even its prevalence in some environments. I know that crime is often tragic in its effects. But that does not make crime interesting to me. Instead, I tend to find it boring or exasperating: human beings choosing to operate below their potential. I do enough of that on my own, to my own annoyance, so that I do not find it interesting when others do it.

So, every Casey Anthony headline, every Casey Anthony video clip, simply reminded me that I had better things to do with my time and attention (both of which are limited and irreplaceable) than to devote any of either to her case.

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My wife and I were out of town Tuesday, and when the news story about the Casey Anthony verdict came on the hotel TV, a headline scrolling across the bottom of the screen asked, "Why do we care so much?"

My immediate response was, "Who's "we"? I don't." With further thought, I have two more responses: You newspeople care because it's macabre. Audience members who do care, care because you've shoved it at us for the past month.

It has been said that news is not what happens, it's what somebody tells you about what happens. For me, the Casey Anthony case, like many murder cases before it, raises the question, "How do national news outlets decide which events deserve to be national news?"

I don't know. My guess would be that the answer sometimes has more to do with economics than with the question, "What will *help* our audience?" The news business is a business. I get that.

But as businesspeople, the people behind the news would not abundantly supply that for which there was no demand. And I don't get the demand.

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Now, let me step back and recognize that some people seem to be moved by something like compassion for young Caylee Anthony.

But they, like me, could not do a thing for that child. Compasssion without the ability to act is potentially dangerous, because it can train us to feel without acting, and action is the only thing that will affect whatever/whomever we care about. A steady diet of Casey Anthony cases could produce a populace that is both passionate and passive.

I'm afraid to contemplate what kind of government would arise from such a populace.

Elwin 3.0, Day One

Coming to the end of my first day as an ex-employee of the Post-Gazette. I have a long list of projects to do, but not much of a schedule. The only fixed element so far is spending 3-4 hours a day hanging out online with stock traders, to learn from them.

I received the new issue of Fortune magazine today. It contains an article about Conan O'Brien's largely accidental transformation from late-night talk show host to multimedia brand. The title, "Conan 2.0," makes me smile, because I have thought of the phase of life that I am now entering as the time of Elwin 3.0.

Beyond that, it gives me much to think about as I build my media empire. This paragraph by itself feels to me like a mini-seminar:

Team Coco (O'Brien's company), not TBS, chooses which clips to use, edits them, and posts them. Preview clips from each night's taping go up an hour before the show's East Coast broadcast; within an hour after the show's West Coast broadcast more than a half-dozen clips from that night's show are posted on its site and Facebook, and linked to via Twitter; and the full show is viewable online the day after at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Last year at The Tonight Show Bleyaert (staffer Aaron Bleyaert) had tried to get pre-show clips posted, but even that seemingly simple idea was difficult to execute because NBC.com ran the show's site, and putting up such clips wasn't part of its normal workflow process. "After the experience that we had at NBC, we wanted to be in control," says O'Brien's agent, (Rick) Rosen. "We wanted the freedom to exploit our content."

Two things jump out at me: the fact that NBC made posting clips difficult because it "wasn't part of its normal workflow process," and Rosen's quote at the end, "We wanted the freedom to exploit our content."

That paragraph made me think about journalism, and specifically about newspapers, which are still challenged to develop workflow processes that suit today's world, and which still largely deny journalists the freedom to exploit their content.

But then, journalists are not exactly battering down the doors to demand the freedom to exploit their content. I fear that most of us have never even considered the idea of exploiting our content. In that regard we are being no smarter than the Huffington Post contributors who feel screwed by the AOL deal. While part of me shares their moral outrage, another part of me is compelled to ask, "Did you not know that you were creating value? Did you not consider the possibility that eventually somebody would get paid?"

Do journalists consider the possibility that their content could have value beyond the final edition? That it could generate money beyond the paycheck?

Accumulation

My friend Andrew W. Thornhill alerted me to this piece at Mediapost.com, "Aggregation, Make Way for Accumulation."

A couple of things struck me right away:

- accumulation is something that anyone can do.
- accumulation may take a long period of time, but it need not take much time; that is, it can happen in really small increments of time.
- accumulation can be quite inexpensive
- whatever your intentions at the outset, you never know where accumulation will lead (seriously, who would have come up with, Julia Child recipes=Meryl Streep movie?)
- accumulation sounds a lot like NYU media prof Jay Rosen's "100 Percent Solution" for innovation in journalism
- I've experienced some accumulation myself and have a head start on experiencing more of it, simply by virtue of having a blog, a website, and a few twitter IDs.

I have long wanted the Post-Gazette to become more innovative than I have known it to be. But maybe *I* need to be more innovative than I have been.

Tonight I received my first award as a journalist. It came from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation, and was given for "A Hard Lesson" (I don't know where that title came from), a story about Keith Gardner's failed run at starting a business. It was named best business feature in a print publication with more than 100,000 circulation. Since all of the awards are by definition for stories about black folks, that really meant, the best business feature about a black person in a print publication with more than 100,000 circulation. I suspect that is a really tiny category.

Still, it is nice - very nice - to be appreciated. I'll enjoy looking at my plaque a few times before letting Mom have it.

And the gathering itself reminded me that being a journalist is important. I'm fortunate that it pays better than anything else I've done, and it can be a lot of fun. But it is also important.

That is good to remember.