Author Archives: Tom Abate

About Tom Abate

I work in a daily newsroom, which is to say I spend a lot of time gossiping. Not long ago I overheard some of my copy desk colleagues comparing notes about who had “killed” the most newspapers, in the sense of surviving shut-downs or mergers. I stunned them into a momentary silence when I said that I had started a newspaper. In 1989 I co-founded an alternative monthly, the North Coast Journal, in Humboldt County, California. My wife and I sold it when I began the odyssey that led to my current job as Silicon Valley reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. But the Journal endures. Moreover, the publisher who bought it from us has since then taken it weekly. I have other media startup and turnaround experience. In 1974, as a U.S. Navy journalist, I started a closed-circuit radio and television station aboard a ship. The audience was small but the feedback was immediate. I’d finish my nightly newscast and stroll down to the mess desks to get an earful from the crew. In 1980 I became editor-in-chief of the financially-troubled Daily Californian, the independent student newspaper of UC Berkeley. There, I presided over a financial comeback. I graduated that same year and started a typography shop in Eureka, California. It eventually spawned the monthly I mentioned above. (In a four-part blog essay titled, “The time I bought half-interest in a newspaper from a guy with wooden teeth,” I discuss my first failed attempt to start a community paper.) Since 1992, as a business reporter covering Silicon Valley, I’ve seen companies and industries rise and fall. For the last two years I’ve been blogging as MiniMediaGuy to wrap my mind around the technologies, personalities and possibilities in new media. I know media, big and small. Ditto for business. For more than three years I’ve been blogging my heart out in minutes squeezed between a full-time job and my duties as a husband and father. Why? Because I believe journalism can and must thrive.

And now a brief word from our sponsor

Yesterday I created a new personal web site, TomAbate.com, or more accurately Tim Bishop whipped it together while I watched and did the small stuff. Tim also activated a new email contact, tom (at) tomabate (dot) com. I was long overdue for a central place to establish my identity in cyberspace. This blog represents just one of my interests and it behooved me to have a more rounded representation of who I am and what I hope to do.

The addition of a personal web site is the second recent upgrade to my digital persona. Regular readers will have noticed that this site was entirely redesigned in the spring by Charlotte Yee, who took many, many hours away from launching a business (preserving mementos of children’s art) whilst contesting her forced exit from her former job as an economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It has been my great good fortune to have friends like this to assist me but the flip side of that truth is that I am pretty helpless on my own in picking up new technological tricks. Tim, for instance, has been chiding me for not getting onto the telegraphic messaging service, Twitter, of which I am certainly aware — but do not use. I was made aware of Twitter last spring at the Society for New Communications Research conference in Las Vegas, where Ted Shelton, Chris Heuer and other social media entrepreneurs were Twitting (or is it Tweeting) like crazy. And I see the use for a blas message service of this sort if you have been, say, imprisoned in Egypt.

However, I am not planning to visit Egypt and I do not believe Egyptian authorities have the gall that the American government has manifested with its new policy of extraordinary rendition. (I suppose I might want to Twit or Tweet if I were picked up by U.S. authorities, but habaeus corpus has been suspended so what would be the point of the protest, if the government has put it powers of imprisonment above the law?).

I can imagine business uses for Twitter. Some months ago, for instance, I created a Twitter account after one of my workmates (at the SF Chronicle where I am a business reporter) started a pilot project to test its usefulness on the job but it would take a large and conscious effort to get the tool into wide circulation among the staff and then figure out how and when to use it — as something other than a distraction.

And that is my orientation to digital technology in general — if I don’t use it as a tool, then I avoid it as a distraction. The downside of this attitude is that I end up lagging on projects like building a personal web site. Tim was able to accomplish in a three hours what I had meant to do for a year. Of course Tim likes to “geek out” as he says, so no doubt I am the beneficiary of many hours of learning on his part. I wish I knew a little more about the tools, and I will learn as time and energy allow. Meanwhile I’m just grateful that I have friends who will help me over the technical hurdles of expressing myself in this networked medium.

Feast, famine, cannibalism in newspapers

What’s up with the newspaper industry? Surprisingly, readership is up in developing nations where globalization is raising incomes, according to the World Association of Newspapers which recently unveiled its exhaustive summary of the print news industry in 2007. A WAN press release offers detailed results by region and country. The other big theme I noticed is the rise of the free dailies which are proliferating faster in mass-transit dense Europe than in the suburbanized USA.

U.S. press leaders are part of WAN. The following quote from Dean Singleton, chief executive of the MediaNews Group, caught my eye. Singleton owns a string of papers in my San Francisco Bay Area, including the Hayward Daily Review, to which I subscribe. According to WAN Singleton says:

Why should we cannibalize our newspaper, why not simply adjust and wait and see? Personally I prefer to have a cannibal in my family rather than to have one as my enemy.

I assume that Singleton made those remarks in the context of explaining why newspapers should be moving their businesses to the web. But seeing as how MediaNews employees will soon vote on whether or not to join the Newspaper Guild, let me emphasize that Singleton could not have meant cannibalism literally. California law would clearly forbid such behavior though I believe the federal protections may have been amended after 9/11.

Meanwhile there must be consternation in the Los Angeles Times newsroom as the Tribune Company enforces a chain-wide edict that there be a 50-50 split between pages devoted to advertising and news. According to MediaPost:

If the 50-50 policy were already in force, this would have necessitated a 13% reduction in editorial volume, resulting in a total size reduction of 26%. Plotting the trend out, presuming that advertising inches decrease at the same pace, the newspapers would be less than one-quarter of their current size within five years.

But while newspapers, the foundation of mass media, suffer readership and advertising declines, it appears that readership is growing for alternative papers that are presumably weekly in periodicity. When the Media Audit looked at readership in 117 alt papers in 88 media markets, it found a three percent increase in print readership and a seven point increase in web unique visits. The print gains sound good in comparison to daily newspaper losses but the online viewer ship seems anemic.

What does it all mean? Search me, but the prevailing wisdom is summarized in an IDC forecast to the effect that:

Internet advertising revenue will double from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012. During the forecast period, Internet advertising will grow about eight times as fast as advertising at large.

So maybe Dean Singleton is right. Newspapers shouldn’t say “cannibalism” as if it’s a bad thing.

TV woes: so many channels so little time

American households get an average of 118.6 channels of television but watched only 16 according to Nielsen’s annual “Television Audience” report. In summarizing the report MediaPost editor Joe Mandese writes:

“The finding suggests that while the supply of media options is expanding, consumer attention may have reached its limits . . . because Nielsen’s definition of the supply of channels “receivable” and “tuned” have served as a benchmark for understanding how fragmentation impacts consumer behavior as the number of media options expands.

What happens when viewers reach the saturation point? I guess we’re poised to find out.

Conference in Minneapolis seeks media reform

The National Conference on Media Reform is being held this weekend in Minneapolis and while the gathering is largely being ignored by the corporate media that are the intended targets of reformers, the organizers offer plenty of ways to listen in to the speeches. The local alternative paper, the Twin Cities Daily Planet, covered the kickoff of the event. I had hoped to attend this conference myself but it would have been a costly exercise. My sympathies and energies go with the reformers, who correctly argue that mainstream media coverage is so insipid as to be misinformation. Just the other day a U.S. Senate committee criticized the White House for making misstatements about WMDs that led the nation into war. Months earlier a press watchdog group tabulated 935 falsehoods uttered by senior administration officials — all dutifully repeated by corporate news media.

The present news system is broken and the worst of it is the denial. Jay Rosen calls journalism a religion. Professional journalists cling to their sanctimonious self-image as public watchdogs and ignore evidence that the current system has failed time and again, and not just on issues of war. The news media touted the housing sector right up until it the current mortgage crisis. It pumped up the stock market during the dotcom excess. The public has so little trust in U.S. media that one recent poll found President Bush more credible.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune used the media reform event as a peg to editorialize in favor of the Free Flow of Information Act. This is supposed to be a federal shield law which is fascinating given that the word “shield” appears no where in the bill, which cleared the House last year and now awaits Senate action. The Star Tribune editorial notes that the Free Flow Act would “provide reporters with only modest protection” and goes on to say that:

This weekend’s conference will highlight the diversity of today’s journalism landscape, with bloggers and citizen journalists taking on increasingly important roles. Determining who’s actually practicing journalism — and who should receive protection — is one of the ongoing and important debates about the final shape of the law.

What is the paper’s position? Should bloggers have shield protection? Apparently there is not enough moral courage on the Star Tribune masthead to take a stand. The House version of this Free Flow Act limits its “modest protections” to paid journalists and excludes citizen journalists. How unconstitutional, not to mention stupid, would it be create a legal distinction between the press and the public at just that point in history when technology is erasing that distinctions. Now more than ever the First Amendment must cover all Americans or it covers none.

It sounds like the Star Tribune is ready to throw bloggers under the bus. I’d wager its editors never bothered to read the act which codifies dozens of reasons to jail journalists, however journalism may be defined. The bill contains one clause written for Steve Jobs. The Apple Ceo once tried to stop bloggers from reporting details of forthcoming products by demanding they reveal their sources. But the bloggers sought and received protection under the California state shield law (see case summary). The Free Flow Act would create a new federal cause of action that would allow any corporation to force a journalist to reveal the name of any source who discloses a trade secret. What a gift to Corporate America. Stamp “trade secret” on anything and it muzzles the media and trumps state shield laws.

Some months ago I reviewed a book by former Labor secretary Robert Reich titled “Supercapitalism.” Reich argumes that corporate interests now have so much political clout that the legislative process has become a competition for advantage between lobbies. Lawmakers are so overwhelmed by demands from these fictitious legal entities that they can’t hear the flesh and blood citizens they represent.

Like Congress, U.S. media have become corporate mouthpieces. The corporate agenda has become the media agenda. Each day BusinessWire and PRNewswire aggregate corporate press releases and funnel them to the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France Press, Bloomberg and other the mainstream news outlets. Thousands of editors see these corporate press releases each day. Like Congress, the media is mesmerized by these corporate messages. Supercapitalism has created Supermedia.

So while we may hope for reform we should not expect it and plan instead to build the media we want.

Whistleblower bill needs tweaks, passage

Charlotte Yee writes in her Government Accountability blog that the Project on Governmental Oversight is prodding House and Senate leaders to reconcile some minor differences in their respective bills to give people more legal protection against retaliation when they step forward to expose government wrongdoing.

Yee, who is currently contesting the retaliation she endured when she reported a superior for sexual harassment, has discovered that federal employees must take their claims to a toothless and spineless administrative court called the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). She writes:

This bill can provide what is currently lacking — a venue for federal whistleblower cases to be heard in district court before a jury.

Help prod Congress by joining the letter writing campaign to pass the whistleblower bill. Empowering people to step forward is the best form of accountability.

Hyperlocal hero fails, finds new job

My friend Tim Bishop points me to some reality checks today, suggesting that the Washington Post’s much-touted experiment in hyperlocal web publishing has lost its leader and perhaps its way. Rob Curley is one of the newspaper industry’s new media and I have lauded in this blog about 10 months ago. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that Curley has taken five associates with him to Las Vegas where he and his condotierri will build a working hyperlocal site — not like the large and costly flop they are leaving behind in suburban Virginia. WSJ writer Russell Adams concludes his article by saying:

As he decamps with five colleagues to take on an Internet venture for the Las Vegas Sun, Mr. Curley acknowledges he didn’t get out into the community enough. “I was the one who was supposed to know we should be talking to Rotary Club meetings every day,” Mr. Curley said. “I dropped the ball. I won’t drop it in Vegas, dude.

Wow, that’s great work when you can get it!

Meanwhile, iconolanistic blogger Scott Karp writes that the Washington Post’s front web page proves of no use in helping him decide whether or not thunderstorms in suburban Virginia would snarl traffic or cause office closures. But, as Karp blogs, he must use a search engine to find the map, posted by the local power company,  of downed trees and other obstructions. People want news they can use. But newspapers give them all the news that editors think is fit to print.

Oh, well, this won’t happen in Las Vegas now that Rob Curley’s crew has arrived. For one thing thunderstorms are rare in the Las Vegas desert and other than the occasional decorative palm, there are no trees.

Mergers bad business says New Yorker writer

Industry e-zine Paid Content celebrates its sixth birthday this week by biting the hand that feeds it. Deals and the rumors of deals are its stock in trade so kudos to the Content-meisters for touting the New Yorker’s skeptical assessment of CBS’s acquisition of CNet. Financial columnist James Surowiecki uses this media deal as a case in point to remind readers that:

corporate marriages only rarely end in bliss—many studies have found that most mergers and acquisitions do little for the acquiring company’s bottom line. A KPMG study of seven hundred mergers found that only seventeen per cent created real value, and that more than half destroyed it. And a McKinsey study of mergers that took place in the nineteen-nineties found that less than a quarter generated excess returns on investment.

Why then does the Wall Street Journal introduce many mergers with details leaked by people close to the deal who violate their legal duties of confidentiality? And when the Journal gets a so-called scoop of this sort does it thank the leaker by soft-pedaling criticism? Or is there some other explanation for fawning coverage of deals that so often go bust?

In a variation on Surowieki’s theme, I once wrote about how publicity helped create a frenzy for initial public offerings (IPOs). I quoted Yale University economist Richard Shiller, who dedicated a chapter of his book, “Irrational Exuberance,” to how the press invented financial euphorias. The article quotes him as saying:

I don’t think there were any bubbles until there were newspapers,” said Shiller, whose research went back to the Dutch tulip bulb craze of the 1630s.

Imagine that. Extra, extra, read all about it! Newspapers invent hype! Hollywood lives for hype. Economists understand that “the (film) distributor earns most of its revenue over the first two or three weeks of the movie’s screen life.” The publicity blitz in advance of a new movie is intended to get viewers into this three-week window. Of course Hollywood thanks the media with generous advertising.

Surowiecki is known for his observation that public — or rather niches within the public — often have greater collective expertise than the so-called experts, which concept is captured in the book title, “Wisdom of the Crowds.” The crowds will need all the wisdom they can muster because mass media often seems intent on selling its audience a bill of goods.