California’s Deal for News

August 22, 2024 | No Comments
By Andre m - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31832691

A deal has just been struck in California by Assembly member Buffy Wicks that averts what could have been, in my opinion, disastrous legislation written by lobbyists to benefit primarily incumbent, investor- and hedge-fund-controlled news media in and out of the state. 

I am gratified that the outline of the announcement approaches what I had proposed in my research on the legislation, commissioned by the California Chamber of Commerce, and in testimony I gave to a California Senate committee. 

The structure of the deal: a private/public fund to support news, overseen by an independent board and administered by a university. I’ve gotten a few more details of the plan and this could well change, but as I understand it, it provides for:

  • A matching fund for news with $15 million from Google and $15 million in public money in the first year. Years two to five are to be determined but I understand there are floors and ceilings set.
  • The fund is likely to be based on employment (full-time and freelance) in news organizations, which would disappoint me insofar as some money would end up with investor- and hedge-fund-owned newspapers that are cutting more than investing in news. Money being fungible, that money will likely go to their P&Ls rather than supporting more reporting. 
  • The fund is to be administered at UC-Berkeley’s journalism school under a board that includes representatives from independent, Black, Latino, and ethnic media and labor. That board will decide such matters as eligibility. 
  • Google will have no say in how these funds are distributed.
  • Google will contribute $5 million to seed a separate AI innovation fund, which will benefit news and other sectors. In my testimony, I said it critical for the news and tech industries to work together on this front, now more than ever. 
  • Other tech companies will be approached to contribute to one of the funds. OpenAI is quoted in Wicks’ press release. I wish that Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and other companies will step up. 
  • In the press release, Governor Gavin Newsom also expressed support for legislation that would devote a substantial portion of “official marketing, advertising and/or outreach advertising with local and underrepresented media outlets.” Good.
  • And importantly, Google will continue its support for its News Showcase and Google News Initiative (GNI), with a commitment increasing to $10 million a year. I had feared this support would go away if one of the bills passed. Especially Google has driven much innovation in news and the continuance of the fund in California (unlike Canada) will enable worthy projects (like the WGBH quality news network) to get ongoing support. 

I would have preferred a fund like the NJ Civic Info Consortium, an independent, nonprofit organization established by legislation to provide grants and support to local news organizations meeting goals for equity and innovation in news, with accountability for outcomes. New Jersey’s fund, supported by public and foundation dollars, is administered by an independent board appointed by universities, the governor, the legislature, and the board itself, working closely with Montclair State University’s Center for Coooperative Media and New Jersey News Commons. (Disclosure: I serve on the Center’s board of advisors.)

The California deal averts many perilous outcomes from the legislation. The two bills that came from California’s Assembly and Senate raised, in my view, constitutional issues — which I discussed in my paper and then here and here — and likely would have been tied up in courts with challenges for years, delaying payment to news organizations.

Worse, Meta vowed that if the legislation passed, it would do what it did in Canada  pulling news off Facebook and Instagram rather than being forced to pay for linking to it. As I also outline in my paper, that move has proved inconsequential to the platforms but disastrous to news sites — especially community news sites — that have lost most of their social traffic. Given that there will be no new law in California, Meta will not have an excuse to drop news there. I hope it will not only continue to link to news but will support these efforts. Meta says that because there is no legislation, it will not limit news on the platforms.

There are many questions that can be answered only through experience: who exactly will join the board; how the board will determine eligibility for the funds; and how — if at all — it will monitor accountability. 

I give much credit and respect to Wicks. I was quite critical of the first draft of her California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA) and testified against it. In that hearing, she made clear that she was open to discussion and meant it. She has proved an adept negotiator in bringing many interests — old news and new news in many definitions and technology — together for a rational, logical framework. Not everyone will be pleased. That’s negotiation.

I am especially glad to see that Wicks’ efforts broke a pattern that started in Germany and ran through Spain, the EU, Australia, and Canada, in which legislators under the influence of old-media lobbyists passed bills making demands on tech companies, rather than attempting to find mutual benefit. California shows a new path toward discussion instead. In California, Wicks and her Senate colleague Steve Glazer used their bills as a forcing mechanism to bring Google (and, I hope, other technology companies next) to the table. 

Incumbent newspapers and their lobbyists have behaved badly in California as they have elsewhere. The original version of CJPA was written by newspaper lobbyists. It was an adaptation of Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s equally awful federal Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which was created by the News/Media Alliance (new name for two very old newspaper and magazine trade associations). That bill is thankfully so far stalled in Congress (what isn’t?). I testified against a carbon copy of CJPA that has so far not passed in Illinois. 

Newspaper lobbyists always and not surprisingly attempt to benefit their legacy funders to the exclusion of other independent, not-for-profit, Black, Latino, and digital — that is to say, competitive — news media. In New York, unbelievably, a new law creating a tax credit for journalism jobs benefits print — let me repeat that, print — newspapers to the explicit exclusion of not-for-profit and digital local media. How damned 1973 of the Empire State and its governor. There’s a similar effort in Washington State. In California, as I understand it, the local newspaper lobbyist association has held out to get compensated on the basis of jobs (rather than goals and outcomes); increase its representation on the board; and drastically cut a percentage of the fund that was supposed to be earmarked for underrepresented and small, hyperlocal news media. I am glad that Google now still has funds in its GNI, which it can flexibly direct to those needs. 

My glass-half-empty view is that the old, incumbent, hedge-fund- and investor-controlled newspapers — which are primarily responsible for the consolidation and ruin of news in the state — still have too much influence. My glass-half-full view is that the lobbyists did not fully get their way — we know because a few are stomping their feet. That fills me with Schadenfreude.

It should be noted that the newspaper lobbyists had insisted that Canada’s legislation has been a success for journalism. That could not be more wrong (and I write about that in my paper). They also tried to argue that California should get the same dollar amount Canada did ($73m US), but on a proportional, per-journalist basis, the state of California ends up at lest as well off as the entire nation of Canada. 

What matters most to me now is that independent, not-for-profit, Black, Latino, underrepresented, community, and digital startup news — that is to say, the future, not the past of journalism across America — must gather together to be heard as a force to counter the malign influence of the hedge funds and investors who are dismantling journalism in every state. There are great groups serving these news organizations, new and old — Local Independent Online News (LION), the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), Montclair State’s Center for Cooperative Media (CCM), and the Newmark J-school’s Center for Community Media (the other CCM). They need to exert themselves as a force to be heard by legislators whenever the health of local news is discussed. 

It is also important for legislators and governors to realize that they need no longer bow down before the proprietors of old, dying newspapers. The L.A. Times — which has been laying off journalists right and left at the same time as its investor owner was arguing that he alone was somehow due more than $100 million in this legislation — now has market penetration in L.A. County under five percent. It does not set the agenda. Publishers no longer buy ink by the barrel; they buy it by the thimble and thus politicians need not fear them anymore. Legislators would do better paying attention to emergent, diverse, community, and digital media in their towns, helping to support that. 

I am a Kamala Harris Democrat, but for one paragraph I’m going to sound like a libertarian: I get hives at the idea of government involvement in speech and especially jouranalism. I dislike news organizations of any age or size cashing in political capital and seeking favors from and depending on government — or technology companies — when they are supposed to cover those powerful institutions independently. But given that the discussion about support for local news has already jumped over that hurdle, my interest has been in seeing that the support is done in the best way possible. California’s deal is a step in the right direction. The NJ Civic Info Consortium is another.

The money these funds provide can help but it is far from enough to support the news we need. The same must be said for philanthropy and patronage: never enough. News has to find greater efficiencies and independent economic sustainability, a quest I’ve devoted the last fifteen years of my career to working on. There will be no messiahs — all are false — or easy solutions. Old journalism — our broken national media and our denuded local news media — are likely beyond repair. This is why I came to teach: to help the next generation build a new journalism to serve communities rather than their own interests, to concentrate on value provided to communities, not proprietors’ pocketbooks. If policymakers really want to support news, then support that future. 

Could a new day dawn at The Times?

August 18, 2024 | No Comments
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Since I’ve been constantly criticial of The Times and its coverage of the election, here is a thread from the socials in which I note a Sunday morning of positive coverage of Kamala Harris leading the paper online:

Well knock me over with a bald eagle feather: The Times leads today with positive coverage of Kamala Harris. Maybe they recognize the momentum; maybe they want that interview. In either case, I welcome this good & fair reporting.

Elsewhere on the socials, prof-née-Timesman John Schwartz accuses me of “labored parsing of every story and hed” to impute ulterior motive. Isn’t such labored parsing what once made The Times the Times? What I seek is that they recognize what legions of their readers do.

I struggle every day wondering what has happened to The Times; why it does what it does now. Apart from clearly campaigning to oust Biden, I do not impute motives apart from those unfortunately built into our business: a bias for chaos & confrontation, thus attention.

I have wondered whether as a journalist and prof I might overreact to The Times’ failures — but then I see what legions of readers (apart from a few defensive journalists) say, agreeing with and amplifying my criticism. They see it, too. If only The Times would.

It is my fondest hope that The Times listens and learns, for we need it to be better. Note I never threaten to cancel my subscriptions to The Times (and the faltering Post). They should be so lucky. No, I will stay on their ass, expecting better of them.

You might say I’m complimentary of The Times now because it’s complimentary of Kamala Harris, whom I support. No. Its reporting backs up its presentation & there is fair criticism in it. What strikes me is how The Times could see no positive light on the left. Today it does.

Now I can only hope that as the election draws nigh, The Times will also do a better job of seeing and reporting on the fascist storm yet threatening on the right. That is my greater criticism and I’ve yet to see constructive change there.

With profound regret, I’ve declared The Times broken. Can it be fixed? I don’t know. And it is not alone. The incumbents of mass media are failing & falling. One advantage is that I am taking to reading more sources every day.

I read The Times & Post but also now others (without paywalls): The Guardian, of course, plus the Sun-Times, The 19th, Talking Points Memo, The Grio, SF Standard, and others. It is time to support such new and independent journalism.

Note well that I do not speak alone. See the quote tweets and responses to my thread suggesting Kamala Harris should bypass incumbent mass media to speak with new and independent media.

I should add that in The Times, it takes three to make a trend, so one day does not a trend make. I am happy to note a good day and hope for more. We have 80 days to the election, so we shall see….

POSTSCRIPT

Well, that didn’t last long. A day after I praised The Times for fair coverage, it carps that four weeks in, Harris hasn’t written a 110-page policy document, and it has to point out that people disagree about Israel and Gaza. Regression to the mean.

What ‘Press’?

August 13, 2024 | 1 Comment
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Margaret Sullivan — whom I greatly respect and with whom I almost always agree — wrote a Guardian column asserting that “Kamala Harris must speak to the press.” Go read it first. 

I disagree. That resulted in a thread on the socials I duplicate (with mended typos) here:

What “press”? The broken and vindictive Times? The newly Murdochian Post? Hedge-fund newspaper husks? Rudderless CNN or NPR? Murdoch’s fascist media? No. She can choose many ways to communicate her stands with others outside the old press and with the public directly. The old press can and should be bypassed.

Look at the press’ behavior. When given a chance to ask questions, they sound like they’re in a lockerroom, seeking quotes, not policy. This does nothing to inform the electorate. I know the argument about testing a candidate. But the press as currently configured aims for game & gotcha.

Job 1 is to inform the electorate about policy and stakes. That is up to the candidate to communicate and voters to judge. The press is unnecessary in that process. It can still analyze all it wants. But its questions will do nothing more to inform.

If Harris preempts interviews with the hostile press — which includes not just Fox but now The Times and Post — and goes for an interview on MSNBC she’ll be accused of seeking softballs. (Not that Trump didn’t just get a BJ from Elon Musk…)

The next question is one of character. There we would learn more from seeing Harris and Walz sit down with Howard Stern (his interview with Biden was stellar and revealing) or late-night hosts (Colbert, not for God’s sake Fallon) or podcasters.

What I most want to see Harris & Walz do is bypass old, white mass media (run by people who look like me) and enter into conversations — scarce time allowing — with Black & Latino press, podcasters, community press, thereby validating their role over the priviledged & powerful incumbents in political discourse.

I’ll say this again: The press needs Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris doesn’t need the press. Their motive in whining for what they take as their birthright (hello, A.G.) is to salve their editorial egos and earn them attention (and money). They have not earned this role; they have forfeited the privilege by their behavior.

I agree with Margaret almost always. But here, not. It is time that we as media critics face head on how broken the press is. It does not perform a constructive and productive role. To the contrary, it has been damaging to democracy. Facing the press is not a proper test. The press fails its tests.

It is also critical that we as journalism educators enable our students to break free of the failures of incubment, white, mass media and build a different future for journalism, paying reparations for the sins of media past & present, listening — truly listening — to the public they serve.

As evidence of why I respect and admire Margaret so, this is her tweet in response to mine:

White voters heard here

July 24, 2024 | 4 Comments
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On MSNBC this morning, I watched Elise Jordan’s focus groups from Green Bay, Wisconsin — the first after the nomination of Kamala Harris. I was honestly shocked that, after the start of this unprecedented presidential campaign by a Black and Asian-American woman, the first voices we’d hear would be from Trump voters. The next group was “right-leaning swing voters.” I was all the more shocked that all the voters in both groups were white. I debated whether to sermonize on this offensive lapse of judgment but instead went light, posting screen grabs of both groups on the socials and asking who might be missing. Enough said, I thought.

Then I got a Twitter DM from Jordan:

This was terribly upsetting. Race-baiting? For pointing out the complete lack of diversity in her focus groups? I responded:

Having been accused of ignorance of Green Bay demographics, I looked them up.

She responded:

I replied:

I thought she might back away from the keyboard, but she did not. She escalated.

Morons like me. Dooming democracy. I didn’t want to see this escalate further. I should have replied, “Bless your heart.” Instead I just said:

There it ended. I’ve given this a few hours to settle but I cannot ignore it for a number of reasons.

First, I depend on MSNBC. I’ve lamented that The Times is broken, The Post has been invaded by Murdochians, CNN and NPR are scared and rudderless, Murdoch’s media are victorious with Sinclair on their side, newspapers are mostly in the clutches of hedge funds. We need MSNBC, now more than ever, as the sane network, not afraid of at least speaking with a liberal and diverse public. It is honestly all I watch all day (other than HGTV). But after the MSNBC post-Trump-shooting and Ronna McDaniel debacles, we need to hold to account the executives in charge of the network — executives from a corporation that, as one insider schooled me, “is a Republican company.” My post was my way of saying: I’m watching, MSNBC. Do better.

Second, I have written in my book, The Gutenberg Parenthesis, about the damage to public discourse done by public-opinion polling as well as focus groups, which I’ll quote:

Jordan’s focus groups are all-too-appropriate exhibits for what is wrong with these means of appearing to listen to the body public while instead revealing more about the worldviews of those who pose the questions.

Choosing to lead this first day of focus groups with Trump and “right-leaning” voters showed the judgment of Jordan and her producers. In this unprecedented moment, I’d far rather have heard from some of the 44,000 Black women who gathered on Zoom this week, for they the ones who will decide this election. To lead with white, conservative voters was an explicit choice. It was bad news judgment and a slap to MSNBC’s audience. And there is no transparency into how these individuals were selected.

Jordan’s first question to the Trump voters was whether the nomination of Harris changes the odds of Trump winning. “Everybody’s excited about it and that scares me,” one of the women said. One woman volunteered of the Vice President, “I think she’s an idiot.” To which Jordan asked, “Why do you think she’s not that bright?” And the answer: “Because she hasn’t done anything… she’s not real smart.” Another piped in: “No one respects her.”

None of that is surprising: Trump voters don’t like Kamala Harris. No news there. Wasted airtime. What is surprising is that Jordan only opened the door for further insult.

In what was shown to us, Jordan did not ask them about their own candidate’s intelligence, felonies, sexual predation (this was a group of women), and evident dementia. She did not press them on what they know about the Vice President, only their bad opinions of her.

Next came the so-called swing voters. I am on record doubting that undecided voters are undecided; my theory is that they like attention, such as this. Jordan’s first question to them was to share one concern about Trump and one about Harris — not a positive characteristic of either, but leading with the negative.

“Who do you blame for President Biden’s being in office in this condition?” Jordan asked the group. “Who deserves the blame?” Hang that in the museum of dead journalism, in the collection of leading questions.

One of the participants followed Jordan’s lead, spouting a budding conspiracy theory that, as best as I could interpret it, will end up with Biden leaving office entirely before the election. “If she’s willing to hide that kind of information…. Is is it a power grab or…?” Jordan then asked the group whether this calls into doubt the vice president’s judgment. Objection, your honor. Leading the voters.

To sum up, Jordan and her producers picked two cadres of white, conservatives to give MSNBC viewers their first sense of voters’ worldview in a state and city that Biden won in 2020, if narrowly, and then asked a series of negative and leading questions about the first Black and Asian American women to run for President.

In Jordan’s attack on me in Twitter DMs, she says that it’s morons like me (how’s that for network marketing?) who doom saving democracy. My assumption is that she thinks it is my obligation to hear the ignorant ravings of people known to already hate Biden and Harris or are quick to come to conspiracy theories about them while admitting that they know little about the Vice President.

I believe strongly that journalism must be better at listening to the public it serves. This is why I helped start a degree program in Engagement Journalism and why I am working to expand its reach to more universities. Focus groups and opinion polls are not exercises in proper listening. They are about promulgating the views of the pollsters and about sequestering people into their stereotypes. Indeed, Jordan’s focus groups are, if anything, unfair to the voters they portray by selecting extreme caricatures of Heartland citizens and setting them up for ridicule.

I am empathetic to them for what media does to them — and today’s focus groups are an example. If we are a divided nation, it is media that divides into its demographic and psychographic buckets, red or blue, robbing us of all of nuance and intelligence and reducing public discourse to gotcha bites.

Said one self-reported Trumpist on Twitter in response to the photo of the Trump group above:

Another apparent Trumpist:

An independent:

A lifelong Democrat opined:

And a self-identified centrist independent offered:

At the end of the day, that is the issue: Was this in any way informative? Is public discourse better off for it? Are voters themselves more informed because of it?

Here’s what a journalist I greatly respect said in response to my tweet:

Here’s the video. Is this journalism? Or am I a moron? You decide.

In mass media’s death throes

July 13, 2024 | No Comments
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The New York Times et al wish Joe Biden would go gentle into that good night. I wish mass media would instead. Here is a post from a thread:

In this defensive New Yorker reaction to Joe Biden (finally) criticizing the press that has been criticizing him, Jay Caspian Kang shares an important insight about the falling power of the press. But I come to a different conclusion.

Kang says that media are weakened and that’s what makes it easy for Trump and now Biden alike to attack them. I say what it shows instead is that as media realize they have lost the ability to set the agenda, their response is to shout louder and more often. That is what we see every day in The New York Times.

In The Gutenberg Parenthesis, I chronicle — nay, celebrate — the death of mass media and the insult of the idea of the mass. Kang makes me see that I next need to examine mass media’s behavior in their death throes. They are not accustomed to being talked back to, by their subjects or by the public. They respond with resentment. They dig in. 

Journalists have never been good at listening. That is why Carrie Brown and I started a program in Engagement Journalism at CUNY (now moving to Montclair State): to teach journalists to listen. In all the wagon-circling by The Times’ Kahn and Sulzberger, The Post’s Lewis, The New Yorker’s Remnick, CNN’s Zaslav, we see a failure from the top to listen to and learn from criticism.

Kang likens Trump/right-wing and Biden/liberal press criticism but they could not be more different. Trump et al want to destroy the institutions of journalism, education, and government itself. Biden and liberals wish to improve the press. We are begging for a better Times. But The Times can’t hear that over the sound of wagons circling. 

As I also write in Gutenberg, we find ourselves in a paradoxical time when the insurrectionists formerly known as “conservatives” try to destroy the institutions they once wished to conserve, putting progressives in the position not of reforming but instead of protecting those institutions. 

When I criticize The Times —and Kang quotes me doing so — it pains me terribly, for I have devoted my life to journalism and long held up The Times as our standard. No more. It is failing journalism & democracy. I fear the incumbents may be beyond reform & require replacement.

By the way, the incumbents of journalism know this. That is why they invest in lobbyists to pass legislation in New York, California, Washington (State and next DC), Canada, and Australia to benefit themselves at the expense of the media — community, nonprofit, startup, digital — that would replace them. More on that another day. 

So I am glad that Biden is finally criticizing The Times and its mass-media peers, if not yet by name. I am glad he rejects the fair-weather platformed pundits, moneyed executives (corporations), and elites (Clooney) who reject him now. In trying to dismiss him, they only make him more progressive.

The New Yorker headline over Kang’s column calls Biden’s criticism of the press “cynical.” It is anything but. It is an overdue and proper response to the cynical exercise of — as Kang makes me understand — the dying power of The Times et al. No one elected Sulzberger, Kahn, Lewis, Zaslav — or Remnick — to run the nation. Millions of us voted for Biden to do so. 

Some on the socials insist that The Times etc. want Trump to win. I’ve said that is a simplistic conspiracy theory. I’ve thought they want chaos: something for them to cover. Now Kang makes me think instead they want to recapture their lost agenda and influence: their power. 

Kang closes: “If Biden believes he is the last chance for democracy in America, perhaps he should start acting like it.” That should be said of those in charge of America’s legacy mass media: If you think you can save democracy, then start acting like it.