Have a NACAF Summer

There’s been lots of speculation about Katie Couric leaving her successful morning spot on the Today show and replacing Dan Rather as CBS’ main news anchor. This raises many interesting questions about the nature of journalism and the development of celebrity journalists. The New York Times reports:

Reports of her impending flight from “Today” to sign on as Dan Rather’s successor as evening-news anchor at CBS have dwarfed most other talk in the television-news business, even the official designation this week of Bob Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas as the anchors of ABC’s newscast, succeeding the late Peter Jennings.

Rumors have floated out of CBS and elsewhere about potential offers of $20 million a year for seven years, and about some unusual window in Ms. Couric present contract that would allow CBS to snatch her up this month, long before her deal ends on May 31. But in an interview yesterday Ms. Couric herself dismissed most of that – especially the rumor of a contract window, which she said was false.

“Obviously my contract is up in May; that’s the one thing that is actually true,” she said. “I am in the process of figuring out what I want to do.”

She did not deny that CBS News might be in the mix of that decision. “I am really fortunate and flattered that I have some opportunities, a variety of opportunities,” she said. “I am trying to make a thoughtful decision while being in the middle of this media spotlight, which I am trying to ignore.”

Couric herself notes that “her personality” suits the Today show format, but maybe the changing nature of news also demands a new type of anchor:

“Every day I get jazzed about this show,” she said. And she acknowledged that “Today,” which asks her to take on roles as varied as interviewing victims of terrorist bombings and singing duets with Bette Midler, is a show that fits her many talents

“I do think my personality in many ways seems tailor-made for this format,” she said. But she added that she believed the broader television news business was changing. “People don’t want to see robo-anchors regurgitating whatever is on the teleprompter in front of them. They want people to be natural, people who feel things, who react to things.”

Those comments may be music to the ears of Leslie Moonves, the CBS chief executive, who has openly discussed his desire for a news anchor who would break the old “voice of God” model of network news.

So will she be getting “jazzed” for the CBS news and what might this mean. One satire site considers the possibilities:

Good evening. I am Katie Couric and here is tonight’s news.

Another car bomb went off in downtown Baghdad today, marking a further escalation in the violence that has plagued Iraq over the past two and a half years. There is still no official word on how survivors of the bombing feel about the upcoming Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes baby.

Ellen Gray from The Philadelphia Daily News asks whether Couric’s statement that she wants to be taken seriously as a journalist is compatible with her prospective $20million deal with CBS:

For all I know, Couric feels the same about her work, and views that $20 million as just a sign of respect, which is how many well-compensated people view their salaries, assuming they’re getting enough to pay the mortgage and care for their families decently.

The problem, though, is that $20 million starts to sound like real money, even in a business where they throw it around pretty freely….

Will it be the news-gathering capabilities of CBS News, an operation that’s at least as important to an anchor’s credibility as whether he or she dresses up for Halloween?

Or will it be Couric herself, who for $20 million a year might not be able to say no to CBS honcho Les Moonves’ apparent hopes for a brighter, more entertaining half-hour, one that’s probably not going to guarantee her a mention in the same breath with Walter Cronkite?

She speculates that perhaps Couric should negotiate down in terms of money but up in terms of control if she really wants to take on the mantle of “serious”. Gray ends with an amusing take on this:

Instead of demanding respect in the form of money, she could trade away a few million for control – and win real respect.

As they might say on those credit-card commercials:

“Reading the news a half-hour a night: $8 million.

“Contributing to ‘60 Minutes’: $5 million.

“Never having to interview another runaway bride or ‘reality’ show castoff: Priceless.”

For a long and serious look at the anchor wars check out David Blum’s recent New York Magazine feature and the Chicago Tribune’s take on Couric

Think Progress reports that a former army intelligence officer is spruking the idea that journalists are “combatants” in wartime:

You might think that in a free society the media should find the facts and truthfully report them to the public. But former Army intelligence officer Lt. Col. Ralph Peters disagrees. In his recent book, “New Glory: Expanding America’s Global Supremacy,” Peters argues that the media should act as “combatants” in wartime: “The media can no longer sustain their pretenses of being aloof, objective observers dispassionately recording events. The media are combatants.” [New Glory: Expanding America’s Global Supremacy, Page 49]

Peter’s has apparently repeated this assertion on Fox’s Bill O’Reilly show, and took it one step further saying recent critical reports on ABC were “killing American soldiers”. No surprises for guessing that O’Reilly agreed with his guest wholeheartedly saying: “I do feel that the press has a responsibility to help the government in the war on terror.”

Indeed journalists are combatants. But they ought not be foot soldiers in a nation’s war, they should be combatants against the likes of army intelligence officer Peters who try to get them to take the spin.

It’s interesting that the story on bloggers and defamation has so many comments today. One blogger told of his experience when sued for defamation

Interesting post on one of the smh blogs about bloggers and the law:

Bogs fall under the same defamation and other laws that regulate all media organisations in the country.

While US bloggers are protected by a freedom of speech clause in the US Bill of Rights, new sedition laws passed by Australian authorities may make life even tougher for bloggers.

Local bloggers, even without the new laws, must be very careful about what they write.

“Bloggers may be liable for what’s on their website as the publisher of the information,” says Stephen James, a specialist in Technology Law and partner at TressCox.
“I think they need to be more cautious. There is no exception in the law for internet conversations.”

There have been only a few cases involving internet bloggers, but James expects more cases involving breaches of other laws.

His golden rule for bloggers is: “Don’t post any comment about any person that you wouldn’t be happy to see about yourself.”

“Remember all laws, including defamation, legal obligations to keep some information confidential, providing negligent advice and even the new sedition laws may apply to bloggers,” says James.

A student in the course emailed me the following questions.

In our blogs are we supposed to have opinions? With our particular topics is it OK to comment on all different stories or do we have to stick to a particular theme (within our topic)? Thanks I’m just a little scared to post anything incase I’m doing the wrong thing

I thought some others might also be feeling trepidatious! So here’s my reply:

Don’t be scared!

The great thing about blogging is that it is an experiment – an evolving form – so there are no right or wrong ways of doing things. I have given you some pointers in class and you can look over them on the web site:

• go to assignments in the main menu click on the blogging assignment section in the left sidebar
• read the task description
• then for more information explore the articles in the righthand sidebar for tips and advice

The short answer is: in some blog posts you will be expressing an opinion – about either the issue or the media coverage in others you will be just noting that something new has happened or that you found an interesting article.

The thing about blogging is that the effect is cumulative. What I am interested in seeing is not the perfect blog post but the evolution of a vibrant set of ideas, notes and connections over the whole period that you keep the blog.

Regarding themes: As I said in class I suspect that during the first few weeks of posting your reach will be quite wide. This is the period in which you will be surveying your area and identifying:

• what are the key issues currently under discussion?
• what approaches are the media adopting?
• what are some examples of really excellent analysis?
• what are the resources available for reporters covering this beat?
• what are experts saying in other parts of the web?
• are the issues the same in the Australian media and UK or US ( or if you speak another language find out what is happening in non-english speaking media)?

Out of all this initial research you will find some things that you are interested in more than others and you may decide to specialise by covering one issue in greater depth, or you might decide to keep covering a few of them. Even at this stage it is good to keep an eye on the general field and report new developments that you find interesting.

You should also use the blog to post reflections about class discussions and the readings and how they relate to the media stories that you are finding.

This may seem a little overwhelming at first but you don’t have to do all of these things at once.

Blogging is all about bite size pieces and letting your discoveries lead you in new directions through creating links.

Start simply and see what happens.

Charles Wright geek in residence at smh.com reflects on being part of a judging panel for Australia’s best blog:

Having sponsored a $10,000 prize for “Australia’s best blog”, Razor can’t blame SmartyHost for wanting to get as much mileage as possible out of the event. It describes the winner, Australian artist Jodi Rose’s Bridge Girl Travelling Diary as “an excellent example of the unlimited nature of blogs”.It’s a highly original site. But is it Australia’s best blog? Razor was on the judging panel, and while it was in our top three, it didn’t get our No. 1 vote. In fact, only two members of the judging panel voted it No. 1. It took the prize only because one of the judges gave it a total of 40 points – by far the most generous award by any judge – and the other 35 points. And both those judges marked between six and seven of the final 11 sites much lower than the other judges. …In our opinion, there should have been some effort to standardise the points. If that had happened, the probable winner would have been Looby Lu or Trollhattansaab.We were the only judge who gave our top award to Karen Cheng’s blog. That was five more than the highest points awarded by any of the other judges.

These are great blogs – more personal and quirky than the type we are engaging with but lovely creations none-the-less.

Paul has come up with a good solution for developing categories in Blogger.

He is using a system called del.icio.us which is a web based bookmark system. It was originally developed so that you could collect links and house them on an accessible web server rather than store them in your browser. That way you can access them anywhere from any computer. But Paul has set up a set of del.icio.us “tags” for his blog and added a set of links to his toolbar.

del.icio.us is one of a number of web based systems of “social software” that help people organise information and communicate on the internet.

Blogging was meant to be easy. But the browser wars and MAC/PC compatibility issues will always get in the way.

So to some solutions.

For those of you who primarily use PCs then the best solution is Uniblogs. A quick simple set-up procedure will give you a fully functional Word Press blog with some easy editing tools that

• allow you to add links to your posts really easily
• allow you to create a blogroll set of links down the side bar without delving into the mysterious code
• best of all it allows you to create and set categories for your posts

You can also create extra pages on specific topics that are listed in your sidebar and that sit outside your reverse chronology blog listings. These are good for detailed pieces on a topic. See how I have added a page called Course Outline at the top of the sidebar.

For those of you who use Macs the solution is probably persevering with blogsome which will give you all the same functionality if you use Firefox as your browser. The only problem with blogsome is that, as we saw today, it is a very busy site and is often quite slow to load – this can be even worse if you are on dial-up.

If you are on a Mac and you find blogsome too slow you can stick with blogger – but as we saw today creating sidebar links can be a bit tricky and it does not offer the category function. Blogsource is similar to blogger – no categories but it gives you much easier sidebar links creation – only works in Firefox not Safari.

There is one other solution that some of you might want to explore. You can set up a blog in any of the free services and then you can post from your computer using a “desktop blogging client” such as ecto which allows you to manage everything outside your browser and avoid all the issues of what tools show up on what browsers. I am posting this using ecto, on a mac to a uniblogs site. However if I went to the control panel with a browser the links tool would not be working! It is not free but it’s pretty cheap and you can trial it for 14 days free. It also has a nifty tool that you can add to your browser toolbar which will allow you to post highlighted text to your blog directly from any browser with a simple click.

For those of you who think you might get serious about blogging it is worth checking out some of the paid services that offer a little more functionality. Typepad is probably the best and at the moment you can get 30 days free.

If you want to look at some blogs to get an idea of what blogging is all about check some of the bloggers that I have added to the sidebar links section