Tag: JIMROMENESKO.COM

Memo to the Wall Street Journal staff

From: Narisetti, Raju
Date: Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 5:23 PM
Subject: Stay The Course

Colleagues
On an average weekday in the last 12 months, our total circulation was 2.3 million for all three print editions of The Wall Street Journal combined. We should all be very proud of the great print offerings we provide, once a day, every single day to this audience.

On an average weekday in the last 12 months, WSJDN actually had 3.9 million readers a day coming to our websites, every single week-day.

The green line in the chart below is when readers come to us looking for the terrific journalism WSJ promises them, as measured in the % of daily readers who come, each hour.

The blue line was when we were publishing our stories, by the hour, in 2011-12.

The red line shows how all of you moved the needle significantly in recent months to get more of your great journalism to your audiences when more of them were looking for it on our site.

May you all stay the course. And accelerate.

Thank you. Goodbye

Raju

via JIMROMENESKO.COM http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/10/wsj-staffers-told-to-stay-the-course-and-accelerate/

The photographer who shot the subway horror photo that appeared on yesterday’s New York Post cover says he’s “surprised at the anger over the pictures, of the people who are saying: Why didn’t he put the camera down and pull him out?”

R. Umar Abbasi says he’s not going to let his “armchair critics” bother him.

They have no idea how very quickly it happened. People think I had time to set the camera and take photos, and that isn’t the case. I just ran toward that train. …The sad part is, there were people who were close to the victim, who watched and didn’t do anything. You can see it in the pictures. The truth is I could not reach that man; if I could have, I would have.

Abbasi says the victim never screamed for help. “It was one of the most horrible things I have ever seen,” he says, “to watch that man dying there. When it was over, I didn’t look at the pictures.”

* Photographer who took subway photos recounts the horror he saw (nypost.com)
* Watch Abbasi’s “Today” interview with Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie (wptv.com)
* “Human being first, photographer second. But still try to get the picture” (chicagotribune.com)
* What Pulitzer-winning photographers say about Abbasi’s cover photo (gawker.com)

via JIMROMENESKO.COM http://jimromenesko.com/2012/12/05/photographer-all-i-can-hear-is-that-mans-head-against-that-train-boom-boom-boom/

Arthur O. Sulzberger, who was Times publisher from 1963 to 1992, died Saturday after a long illness.

Mr. Sulzberger’s tenure, as publisher of the newspaper and as chairman and chief executive of The New York Times Company, reached across 34 years, from the heyday of postwar America to the twilight of the 20th century, from the era of hot lead and Linotype machines to the birth of the digital world.

* Arthur O. Sulzberger, publisher who changed the Times, dies at 86 (nytimes.com)

via JIMROMENESKO.COM http://jimromenesko.com/2012/09/29/former-new-york-times-publisher-arthur-ochs-sulzberger-is-dead-at-86/

* From Philip Corbett’s blog: Save the subjunctive! (nytimes.com)

via JIMROMENESKO.COM http://jimromenesko.com/2012/09/11/hilarious-demand-from-1924-a-congressional-probe-into-the-subjunctive/

The Times-Picayune reporter who shared with Romenesko readers the letter she wrote to her bosses in early July (“I can’t just keep my mouth shut and pretend everything is okay or that it doesn’t matter”) has left the paper.

“Today was my last day,” Kari Dequine Harden writes in an email sent late Sunday. “Gonna try to move forward and find something to believe in again. Not that he gives a rat’s ass, but I decided I would let Steve Newhouse know my reasons for an early departure.”

Her letter to the Times-Picayune owner is after the jump.

Dear Mr. Newhouse,

Today is the day I jump off of your sinking ship once known proudly as The Times-Picayune.

I thought I’d be able to go down with it, but I don’t even recognize the ship anymore. Without being held hostage by severance, benefits, or much of a paycheck, I’m drowning for no good reason.

I have no desire to work for bosses who treat their hardworking, dedicated, and irreplaceable employees in the unforgivable manner I have witnessed firsthand over the past three months.

You have betrayed my most esteemed colleagues, my city, my belief in journalism, and my belief in people.

No numbers, statistical trends, academic theories, or self-serving editorials and articles will make me buy the argument that this is the inevitable way of the future. Not here. Not now. Not in this way.

Need I remind you we were profitable? This paper had good years left in it. Great years. Adjustments may have been necessary, I realize, but I will never believe this is all happening because The Times-Picayune could not have survived if you left us alone just as you had done for decades prior.

We would have found a way. And made you a profit the entire time.

Or, there were serious buyers with serious cash who would have taken over. You could have just sold us. But again and again, you refuse. Why? Are you planning on writing us off as a loss? Would that serve your unbridled greed in some sort of inheritance tax scheme? Is our website intentionally horrid?

To have a once respectable, reliable news source taken away so that billionaires can try to squeeze out a few more millions at the expense of a city’s well-being is criminal.

If you do not know what you are taking away, allow me to remind you.

From New Orleans, a city already with odds against, you are taking our historical record. You are taking away a source of news that has been relied upon to document it all–magnificent and mundane–and to hold police and publicly elected officials accountable. This city is worse off for the loss. We will struggle, new sources will emerge and serve the city in positive ways–but do not for a second think that this isn’t a devastating blow to everyone. Competition included.

Some of things we covered were tedious, painful, and marginalized–but important. The present, history, and future of our city are at stake. And in a city facing significant challenges–from ingrained corruption and the highest per-capita murder rate in the country, to environmental armageddon and crumbling infrastructure–we need to read every detail. Every dollar of taxpayer money spent. Every issue. Every day. And to hear it from people who are experienced and have the best interests of the city at heart.

From us, you are not just taking away jobs, you are taking away identities. Purpose. Role in community.

This is not a job that you can leave at the office. We gave up our name, our neck. And we loved our jobs because we believed we genuinely contributed to a more informed, educated, and enlightened society.

From journalism as an industry, you are taking a gem of a newspaper that was respected, read–in print!–and, yes, profitable. Changes may have been in our future, but nothing like this. This paper had soul and heart and traditions and devotion. We were not perfect, and I believe fully in healthy competition, but we were usually decent, often good, and sometimes great. It was a newsroom of an era past, full of characters and quirks and curiosity and gray-haired grouches. There was passion. And humor. Ego, for the most part, was checked at the door.

You have made it abundantly clear that you do not care about quality in journalism. You have made it abundantly clear that you do not care about New Orleans.

But remember that respect from the community–especially ours–is not something you can buy back. (Not that being respected concerns you, as made clear with the single verbal valuation of “noise.”)

You have made it most definitely clear that you do not care about quality journalism in New Orleans. I predict that within two to three years, three days of print will turn into zero days of print and there will be another massive round of back-stabbing layoffs.

I, for one, will not be buying any more newspapers from you. I will not be visiting your atrocious website.

I am eternally grateful for the experience I have gained in my time with your company, but the company I worked for no longer exists.

Signing out,
Kari Dequine
The Times-Picayune

via JIMROMENESKO.COM http://jimromenesko.com/2012/08/13/times-picayune-reporter-jumps-off-the-sinking-ship/

New York University’s “Undercover Reporting” database chronicles undercover journalism dating back to the 1800s. “Much of this material has long been buried in microfilm in individual libraries and thus very difficult to retrieve,” says NYU journalism professor Brooke Kroeger, who spearheaded the project. “Most digitized newspaper archives do not go back past the 1980s or 1990s and even for those that do, it’s difficult to search without exact details of the piece you are seeking.”

Read the press release after the jump.

Press release

NYU Launches History of Undercover Reporting Database

New York University has launched a database chronicling undercover journalism dating back to the 1800s. The archive, “Undercover Reporting,” includes an array of stories, ranging from the slave trade in 1850s to efforts to boycott Jewish-owned businesses in the U.S. in the late 1930s to treatment of soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the 21st century.

The database, www.undercoverreporting.org, is a joint endeavor of Professor Brooke Kroeger of NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the university’s Division of Libraries, where the Digital Library Technology Services team developed the online platform that hosts the database, with consultation from the Libraries’ Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing and its Collections and Research Services.

“Much of this material has long been buried in microfilm in individual libraries and thus very difficult to retrieve,” said Kroeger, who conceived and directed the project. “Most digitized newspaper archives do not go back past the 1980s or 1990s and even for those that do, it’s difficult to search without exact details of the piece you are seeking.”

The database is designed for scholars, student researchers, and journalists, who can search by writer, publication, story topic, or method (e.g., prison infiltrations, shadowing migrants, impersonation, etc.). It also includes critics’ reactions to these tactics—for instance, their response to the use of hidden cameras.

The database coincides with the publication of Kroeger’s Undercover Reporting: The Truth about Deception (Northwestern University Press, Aug. 31, 2012), which emerged from this research. In the book, Kroeger posits that this type of journalism is not separate from the profession’s conventional practices but, rather, embodies some of its most important tenets—the ability to extract significant information or to create indelible, real-time descriptions of hard-to-penetrate institutions or social situations that deserve the public’s attention.

“Researching the book changed my perception of the practice and its role in journalism history, making clear how early reporters were experimenting with the method–notably northern reporters working to expose the slave trade in the south in the years leading up to the Civil War,” explained Kroeger.

The project is supported by NYU’s Humanities Initiative and the university’s Faculty of Arts and Science.

via JIMROMENESKO.COM http://jimromenesko.com/2012/08/06/nyu-launches-history-of-undercover-reporting-database/

On @CNBC, @rupertmurdoch says name of Wall Street Journal might be changed to WSJ.

— Charles Forelle (@charlesforelle) June 28, 2012

A story in today’s Wall Street Journal says Rupert Murdoch “has long eyed titles such as the Los Angeles Times, whose parent company, Tribune Co., is due to emerge from bankruptcy in coming months.” But Murdoch tells his paper that an LAT deal would have to be looked at “closely” because of regulatory restrictions, among other things.

He also told CNBC’s David Faber that he might change the Wall Street Journal’s name to simply WSJ. (The Journal’s Charles Forelle tweeted the news and got this reaction from followers: “Say it isn’t so!” and “I don’t get it.”)

In the New York Times, Amy Chozik writes:

When asked by analysts about his papers’ future, Mr. Murdoch replied: “The answer is one word: digital.” He said the new company would double down on its digital efforts and that news was “the most valuable commodity in the world” even if “people are buying fewer papers printed on crushed wood.”

Murdoch also said on CNBC that “I’ll head the [News Corp.] board until they bury me.” The 81-year-old media mogul added: “I’m not saying that day is any time soon. I’m in great shape, and, obviously, if I’m lucky enough to live a long time, a very long time, there will be a time when I’ll slow down mentally, and I’ll have to get out.”

* Inside Murdoch’s decision (Wall Street Journal)
* Murdoch praises News Corp.’s newspapers (New York Times)
* Murdoch says News Corp. split will unlock value (Los Angeles Times)
* Watch Murdoch being interviewed by David Faber (CNBC)

via JIMROMENESKO.COM http://jimromenesko.com/2012/06/29/murdoch-mulls-wall-street-journal-name-change/

Letter to Romenesko

From JACK EL-HAI:

News tip: Blogger accused of plagiarizing himself gets no credit

No, I’m not referring to Jonah Lehrer. I’m a freelance writer and book author who recently began blogging. In my blog I’ve been mining years of published articles that have been sitting around doing nobody, especially me, any good and to which I retain copyright ownership.

Last Friday, I blogged my story about a study during the 1930s in which a medical student ate nothing but White Castle hamburgers for 13 weeks. I had previously published this story in Minnesota Monthly magazine (2006) and in the magazine and blog of the Minnesota Medical Foundation of the University of Minnesota (2008). The medical foundation’s blog was not bylined.

When my blog post went up, I received via Twitter and blog comments several accusations that I had plagiarized the story from the U of M blog. Of course, I had written that story and retained publication rights to it. I managed to straighten out most of those people and even got apologies from a few.

Meanwhile, Gothamist and the Daily Mail of the UK got ahold of my Tweets or blog link and published their own stories on the White Castle study. (They’re here and here.) Neither story credited me with the original reporting, and only the Gothamist article linked back to my post. Both stories linked to the unbylined U of M blog post.

This odd sequence of events shows that readers care about the originality of what they read, and some news organizations put no thought into confirming the sources of their stories. They treat blogged material as press releases. What if everything in my original story was wrong? (It isn’t.) If the Daily Mail and Gothamist had done a minimum of fact-checking, they would have come to me, since I’m the only person who has ever reported the White Castle story. I like to see my stories recirculate, but I want the new articles to credit me for credibility’s sake and for my greater glory.

THE ORIGINAL
* 13 weeks eating nothing but White Castle (el-hai.com)

THE RIP-OFFS
* The bizarre White Castle experiment of 1930 that proved hamburger diet “healthy” (Gothamist)
* Bizarre experiment involved man eating only burgers for THREE MONTHS (Daily Mail)

via JIMROMENESKO.COM http://jimromenesko.com/2012/06/26/blogger-would-like-some-credit-for-his-white-castle-piece/

UPDATE: I’m told that half the Times-Picayune news staff is being let go.

At meetings that started early this morning, Times-Picayune staffers learn whether they’ve lost their jobs or will be offered new positions. “Two sources have told Gambit that severance for fired employees will be calculated at 1.5 weeks for every year of service, capped at one year’s compensation,” writes Kevin Allman. “At least three very familiar newsroom names, including award winners, have said they intend to take severance and/or don’t expect to be invited to join NOLA Media Group.”

* The axe prepares to fall at the Times-Picayune (The Gambit)
* Birmingham News employees to learn if they have a future with the paper (weldbham.com)
* New Orleans clamors for its newspaper (wsj.com)
* Gail Shister: “I think of New Orleans often, always with deep affection.” (phillymag.com)
* Rolling the dice at the Times-Picayune (The Nation)

via JIMROMENESKO.COM http://jimromenesko.com/2012/06/12/times-picayune-birmingham-news-staffers-get-employment-news-today/