“Modern news is made more like sausage, but is less humane to the main course.”
News Bits
Posted on July 7, 2008 Written by Leave a Comment
The Java Economy
Posted on July 2, 2008 Written by 7 Comments
“Imitation is the sincerest form of television” – Fred Allen
Apparently, the producers at Good Morning America have taken a page from The Daily Show. Last night, Comedy Central re-aired the show with Larry Wilmore’s insightful and informed piece about how a down economy is destroying Beverly Hills; people are only buying new Bentleys every other year, instead of annually, and plastic surgeons are being forced to do actual reconstructive work!
On Wednesday’s GMA, the producers sent Bianna Golodryga (whose name has appeared here often enough that I don’t have to Google for spelling anymore) to intro a piece about the economy in front of a Starbucks. Paraphrased, it’s getting so bad that people aren’t buying coffee, and Starbucks is closing stores!
Let me understand… people are no longer choosing to spend $4 for a cup of coffee? This is proof of a recession? Yes, Starbucks is closing 600 stores, which is 8-percent of the total nationwide. But let me ask a couple of common-sense questions:
- Didn’t we hear about all of those poor mom-n-pop java joints that were suffering because the evil behemoth from the great Northwest was invading?
Actually, economic studies proved that independent coffeehouses did better when a Starbucks came into the neighborhood. It drove up the overall market for premium coffee consumption, and everyone won. So is this Starbucks retreat a sign that people aren’t buying coffee anymore? Or that they’re buying it from somewhere other than a Starbucks? - How much of the Starbucks retreat is really about growing too fast? How many of the 600 stores were within a half-mile of another location? A quarter-mile? Across the street?
We’ll never know. Starbucks is very good at generating attention for itself. It is an iconic market leader, but too many people will walk away from this GMA story confusing the market-leader with the overall market. Much in the same way that US “domestic auto production” is still calculated as though Nissan, Toyota, Mercedes, Hyundai, and Honda don’t have manufacturing facilities in the United States.
I’m not digging on GMA, I just happen to to watch. But it’s clear that the standards that once reigned over network news continue to drop. Truth is a function of both fact and context – and modern television journalism provides too much of the former without the latter.
Update: the analysts apparently agree with me:
Starbucks said the 600 stores are either unprofitable now or are not expected to meet future return thresholds. All of the targeted units are close to another company-operated store, [Chief Executive Peter] Bocian said.
“This is validating some of the critics who said they were opening stores too close to one another,” said James Walsh, an analyst at Starbucks investor Coldstream Capital Management.
Those critics complained that the company had overbuilt in the United States — particularly in major urban areas like Manhattan, where it is not unusual to see several Starbucks in a single city block.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, ABC, GMA, Good Morning America, Bianna Golodryga, Starbucks, journalism, economy, The Daily Show, Larry Wilmore[/tags]
Journalisim
Posted on June 25, 2008 Written by 8 Comments
I like the Cranky Geeks, but the irony here is too delicious not to share. The title of this roundtable discussion is “Do bloggers need training in journalism?”:
At the very least, let’s get them spell-check.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, journalism, blogging[/tags]
Another Ride at the Lazy-J Ranch
Posted on April 28, 2008 Written by Leave a Comment
In the old West, the word “Lazy” in a brand referred to the italic case. Since most common folk didn’t have access to Adobe Printshop and weren’t conversant in fonts, this was the common parlance to refer to those letters with a slant.
I wish I had a “Lazy-J” branding iron like this one. I’d forever mark those news outlets that use shortcuts and supposition to feed their audience a perspective that is less reflective of reality than we deserve.
Remember the rant from last Friday about how ABC squeezed out a “gasoline-thefts-are-up” story that had no merit and no backing evidence? And I related how often producers would sit on “sexy” interviews and video waiting for the news peg?
Well, Harry Forbes highlights another way journalists can be lazy: want ads for victims. He’s got several examples, I will only steal two:
Hard economic times and spring break
Are hard economic times forcing you to forgo Disneyworld with your kids this spring break? Please tell us about your closer-to-home spring break plans. Send emails to schweitzer@globe.com.Own an SUV?
As gas prices rise, the value of SUVs is dropping. We’re looking for SUV owners who’ve found the trade-in value of their SUV is less than expected. E-mail krasner@globe.com to discuss.
Just cook up a story you want to tell, and advertise for the human you need for those all important “personal details.” Maybe the cowboys had it right… if your “J” is too lazy, it does end up with a slant.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, journalism[/tags]
Fuming Mad
Posted on April 25, 2008 Written by 7 Comments
Gas prices are up. Yes. But manufacturing a story about an increase in gasoline theft has me fuming at my former profession. This morning, it just happens to be focused on Good Morning America’s Bianna Golodryga and her producers. Lazy, lazy, lazy all the way around.
I’m fishing for a transcript right now, but the gist of the story is:
- Gas prices are up.
- Some people leave without paying
- Some people are siphoning fuel.
- You should get a locking gas cap, $15.
What is spurring this sudden trend? Why, the media! “Gasoline theft” is poised to be the Shark Attack story of the summer. A story that carries great anecdotal weight, but is statistically numb.
Nowhere in the GMA piece did they cite statistics. What they did manage to find was a tearful grandmother who was interviewed through a crack in her front door, who was caught driving off without paying. Nine times, in the last couple of months.
Running On Empty
Yes, that was a powerful and emotional interview — all four seconds of it that I saw. She really seemed remorseful. Although I’m willing to bet she’s even more remorseful now that the “crack-in-the-door” interview she did with her local affiliate got kicked up to run across the nation. Television storytelling relies on emotion and visual impact. You can’t really tell a story like this one without that personal touch — but this piece is running on empty, empty journalistic calories. The “personal story” should be something that provides a slice of life, a perspective that reinforces the trend. I can tell you that 3,000 people evacuated a neighborhood, and then concentrate on how it affected a couple of those people in human ways. That’s powerful, and a good use of the medium. Giving you the human part with no statistical context is irresponsible.
This story on GMA was driven by a story that ran in a local market somewhere… and that story only made air because of that interview with the grandmother. We have no proof that gas drive-offs are more prevalent, but a broadcast journalist needs a hook (or “news peg”) to hang that story on.
Carjacking the Agenda
In searching for some evidence online, I found a couple of interesting links. This from Reuters:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. motorists, angered by soaring gasoline prices, are resorting increasingly to theft — a trend that could worsen heading into summer driving season, a national association of fuel retailers said Thursday.
“It is getting bad. When the price of gasoline goes up, the number of drive-offs goes up,” said Dan Gilligan, president of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, which represents about 8,000 retailers.
So, the Petroleum Marketers Association is weighing in, providing us with the perspective that as prices rise, so does attempted thefts. Why do you think the PMAA might be making itself available for interviews at this particular time?
Gilligan said that some state fuel dealer associations were pressing lawmakers to make it easier to prosecute motorists who fill up and then drive off without paying, while many service stations were starting to require payment up front.
Oh, so they are lobbying for legislation! Read the article, and tell me if you can find any evidence that gas drive-offs are up.
Low-Octane Truth
So where do we get the notion that gas theft is up? I found another resource, this time a fact sheet from the NACS, the Association for Convenience and Petroleum Retailing. (Yes, I realize that it spells A-C-P-R instead of N-A-C-S, but NACS was originally founded as the National Association of Convenience Stores.) According to the NACS:
Nationwide, in 2007, gasoline theft cost the industry $134 million, a sharp decline from the $300 million reported in 2005 and the $237 million reported in 2004. (Theft totalled $122 million in 2006.)
We don’t have any data for 2008, but we’re supposed to extrapolate from this data that we’re going to have a huge year for theft? Even though 2007 was way down from 2004 and 2005? Bear in mind that the dollar-figure for theft is also affected by the price. So a pre-Katrina total of $237,000,000 in 2004 took place when regular unleaded was less than $2.00/gallon. (Great interactive chart here.)
The NACS does provide some context as to why thefts might be down, even if the temptation to steal might be up:
The problem of gasoline theft would have been even greater since September 2005 if so many retailers hadn’t begun to mandate prepay in after Hurricane Katrina when gasoline prices reached record levels of $3.06 per gallon, and when gasoline prices again topped $3 per gallon in every year since then.
So thefts are down because gas stations now won’t even turn on the pump for you until you swipe a card or go inside the store to prepay. And they’ve been doing it this way for more than two-and-a-half years.
Sucking on Fumes
ABC News, like many many other outlets that I did not watch nor will see, is guilty of lazy journalism. There is no news value in the story I saw today, other than the vague notion that I might be able to find YouTube videos of people showing me how to illegally siphon gas out of someone else’s tank. Gas thefts have been drastically down for two years because of retail policy changes, even with higher prices. We don’t have any real peg here, other than from a lobbying group that wants tougher state penalties, and stands to gain from a general public perception that this is indeed a growing problem.
In retrospect, I have no clue how long ago grandma cried to the camera. My gut (and inside knowledge of how the sausage of news is processed) tells me that the Grandma interview has been sitting on the shelf for a couple of weeks at least. It’s not even “new.” (Again, just my supposition.) My gut tells me that some hotshot producer has had that tape sitting on his desk for a couple of weeks, just waiting for enough of a gas-related news-peg to justify dusting it off and putting it on national television. So much of modern news is driven from press releases, and the truth suffers along with us.
The only surprise is that I was not able to readily find a news release from a manufacturer of locking gas caps.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, news, journalism, gasoline, crime, ABC News, Bianna Golodryga, marketing, PR[/tags]
TMI
Posted on August 28, 2007 Written by 7 Comments
Too Much Information. We’re not just swimming in it – we’re soaking in it.
I’ve long held the notion that children in the United States would do better in school if they just had the confidence to believe they could in fact understand things. Instead, in my humble opinion, they are psyched out by the overload of data that envelopes us all. And if you can’t possibly keep up with all that stuff that’s already happened, then how can you ever be hip to the now?
I’m going to break this meme up, because I see where TMI is warping our sensibilities at two different levels – macro and micro. As I finish those particular essays, I’ll link across to them.
Micro Inundation
At the micro level, TMI strikes us in two ways: inbound and outbound. Outbound, we obsess about ourselves, and are willing to share anything and everything about us because that’s the only way we can be heard above the din. Additionally, we get so enamored with the endless variety of trees, we not only miss the forest – the forest is burning! We’ve allowed these trivial pursuits to pollute our thinking. If a little information is a good thing, then by all means let’s pile on more! Our worship for detail has diverted our appreciation for small truth, undiluted. We can’t write a short, clear sentence anymore. Inbound, we stream tickers and surround ourselves with a river of news, because it makes us seem in touch with the things we aren’t reading. We feel important because of our proximity to the information, and are tickled that it is available.
Macro Inundation
At the macro level, our institutions are continuing to focus on ever smaller units of time. Significance is placed on the tipping points, and not on the years of leaning and shoving that got us to that equilibrium. Context is all but gone in modern reporting.
Take the Dow Jones and NASDAQ for example. There were people, years ago, who got the daily newspaper just to see what the stocks had done yesterday. Those with significant investments couldn’t wait that long, and had special devices installed that would automate the information in something approximating real time. When computers starting becoming ubiquitous, a younger Michael Bloomberg changed the platform of the ticker, made a billion dollars with his service, and now is able to run for President if he so chooses. Where we used to look at trends and natural flow, we now react and jump to spikes and dips, as if there were any legitimate explanation other than random events and non-linear dynamics.
All I know is that in my former career, if we ever had a 200-300 point drop in the Dow, we’d invariably have a producer waving arms in the air, scrambling us at DefCon 5 across town to find a stockbroker, so we could 
“tell people what they need to do with their 401-Ks.” I had a suggestion. “How about we tell them to increase their investment percentage. If stock prices are lower, they’ll be in a better position for a rebound.” Naturally, I was usually met with stares, as they looked for someone more “normal” to assign the story to. As you can imagine, I also gave up on trying to pitch the Dollar Cost Average Explainer piece.
It’s not enough that we swim in Too Much Information — both in the forests and in the trees. When all you had was a daily newscast, you had 24 hours to digest an event and place it in context. When there were several newscasts in a day, you had a matter of hours to discern, divine, and divulge the truth. Now the clock never stops, and it’s a matter of pure regurgitation. Since every event now carries the significance and weight of being “Now,” we have no choice but to treat all moments as being equal.
I really like the news philosophy of John Stossel, who feels important news happens slowly:
Lest you think this is a new threat, that quote was first published in April 1997. We’ve always been tempted by the lure of Too Much Information. It’s just that now we have ever more opportunities to drown ourselves in it.
