Citizen Media’s Breakthrough Moment(s)

When we look back and try to identify the breakthrough moment(s) when citizen generated media found its way into the American consciousness, the credentialing of bloggers to cover the perjury trial of Scooter Libby, and the subsequent recognition by traditional media of their efforts, should be right near the top of the list. 

The New York Times profiled the bloggers at firedoglake, the liberal collective that has been providing online coverage of the trial since it began in today’s paper.  There is actually nothing new about bloggers covering trials – there was terrific newspaper blogging of the Enron trials by the Houston Chronicle for example – but the independence of these bloggers has made it very different.  The firedoglake bloggers, and their conservative counterparts, are introducing a whole new perspective and new energy to otherwise traditional coverage. From the article:

Even as they exploit the newest technologies, the Libby trial bloggers are a throwback to a journalistic style of decades ago, when many reporters made no pretense of political neutrality. Compared with the sober, neutral drudges of the establishment press, the bloggers are class clowns and crusaders, satirists and scolds.

“They’re putting in a lot more opinion and a lot more color than the traditional reporters,” said Mr. Cox, adding that the bloggers were challenging “the theory of objective journalism.”

While I think that including independent bloggers in the coverage of federal trials is a tremendous step forward — and a necessary one — for both the legal and news industries, I worry that critics will seize on the fact that the bloggers are partisan (or worse, in the case of firedoglake, liberal) to diminish their contribution.   I also worry that all citizen media will be framed by this one, high-profile situation and that the non-traditional conventions of the contributors to firedoglake (such as nicknaming Vice President Cheney “Shooter”) will give other organization pause when considering granting bloggers full access to cover events in the future.  Everyone, most importantly the traditional media folks (newspapers, TV, radio, and established online journalism sites) should fight these stereotypes with all their energy.

There is such tremendous opportunity for citizen media practitioners (read: people) to provide perspective and color to the coverage of all sorts of events that furthers the cause of journalism and helps to inform society.  The work that firedoglake and others are doing at the Libby trial is just one example of how this can work, but its a great model and a huge step forward for the cause of citizen media.

I want XM and Sirius to merge

I really want XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio to merge. 

Why?  I want to hear Dave Niehaus, the best color man in baseball, call Mariners games for me every night.  I want live happily in Boston and know how my Seahawks and Sonics are playing without stalking the crawl on the bottom of ESPN2 each night.  I want to follow NASCAR without having to sit in front of my television for six hours on a Sunday.  Its not just about sports though, I want to hear what Oprah and her friends have to say about eating healthy and decorating my house.  I want to get public radio coverage from around the country without having to sit by my computer and stream it.  I could go on.

All that is available to me, of course, but only if I subscribe to both XM and Sirius.  I have come close to choosing before.  I received Sirius as a Christmas present two years ago and never activated it - mostly because because the football season was already winding down and I didn’t want to wait until next season to start getting full value out of my subscription.  I have gotten all the way to the checkout screen on the XM Satellite Radio website three times in the last few months, in anticipation of another exciting baseball season, only to bail out in hopes that the rumors of a merger will soon come true. 

If XM and Sirius merged, I could buy one good piece of hardware and one subscription and get everything I wanted.  I would pay good money for it.   I would enjoy it thoroughly.  I don’t think I would be alone.

Simply put, I don’t think my desire to hear a variety of different types of programming from one source is unreasonable.  And I think it is well past time when the two satellite radio giants, and the government, got in line with my thinking.

Joe Nocera writes in the New York Times today (Times Select subscription required) about the possible merger between XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.  While most of his column is about the regulatory aspects of the proposed deal and whether the FCC would support the creation of a single satellite radio giant, he does get to the heart of the matter - and seems to be in agreement with me.

[The two companies] also compete, of course, for content. Most famously, Sirius has Howard Stern, who signed a $500 million five-year deal with the company and moved his shtick to satellite radio at the beginning of last year. (Last week, the company announced that Mr. Stern had earned an $82 million bonus, claiming that he brought in far more revenue than he cost the company.) XM has an Oprah Winfrey station. Sirius has professional football and has pried Nascar away from XM. XM has Major League Baseball — and took the National Hockey League away from Sirius. Both have loads of news and talk and music channels, but XM’s channels tend to be more eclectic than Sirius’s.

On the face of it, this all sounds terrific for consumers. “Choice is always a good thing,” said Ryan Saghir, who blogs about satellite radio at Orbitcast.com — and opposes the idea of a merger. But it is not quite as terrific as it sounds. For one thing, what if you are a fan of both baseball and football? What kind of choice is it to have to decide between them? Or what if you like both Howard Stern and Oprah? (Well, O.K., that’s not a good example.) It is hard to think of another technology that forces subscribers to make that kind of choice.

Joe Nocera wants to listen to baseball and football on the same device, and the same subscription, as well.  His column sounds like a desperate plea from a radio junkie like me to make it happen.  Hey, Sirius and XM… hey, FCC… if you won’t listen to me, will you listen to Joe Nocera?

I can understand why the FCC might be nervous about giving the green light for a merger of this size.  But with appropriate monitoring and regulation - to ensure that a merger betwen XM and Sirius wouldn’t drive prices for consumers out of proporition with the market (something Nocera seems to argue isn’t likely because of the continued influence of free radio) - the potential benefits to consumers far outweighs the risks.  And I can understand why XM and Sirius are both believers in their product so much that they would rather compete to the death than cede control of their operation to their arch rival.  But really, would you all think about the consumer for a moment?

Rather than forcing customers to choose betwen services (a fact that I believe is actually driving down interest in satellite radio, and probably radio in general), the FCC could bless the creation of something that would provide a far better radio product than what is available today.  XM and Sirius could create the ultimate radio programming center, pitting their efforts against folks like Clear Channel who have sucked all the feeling out of radio in their quest to dominate the airwaves everywhere.  The merger would force traditional radio stations to compete with better programming and an alternative business model (advertising instead of subscription — a mix which I think is totally possible if you do it right).  And, best of all, I wouldn’t have to live without access to the programming I want because I find it unreasonable to have to buy/subscribe to two services instead of one.

Please FCC?  Please XM and Sirius?  Do it for Joe Nocera!  Do it for me!

Newsiness?

Stephen Colbert appeared on the O’Reilly Factor.  Bill O’Reilly made an appearance on the Colbert Report.  Both happened last night, a few hours apart, in what was billed as a ‘Smackdown’ — the ultimate television news commentator (O’Reilly) finally meeting face to face with the ultimate fictional news commentator (O’Reilly again, just kidding - Colbert), each a caricature of the other.

I didn’t watch.  I was late getting home from work and missed O’Reilly’s show and chose not to stay up late enough to watch Colbert.  I suppose I could have Tivo’d it, but it didn’t seem all that important to me.  Truth be told, while I will watch both Fox and Comedy Central pretty regularly (I am a media junkie, remember, the more information I can consume the better), I get most of my news from the other news networks and I align myself more with the Jon Stewart/Daily Show gang when it comes to that kind of entertainment. 

Fortunately, the news and entertainment media did the watching for me.  A quick Google News search this morning revealed 158 articles about the two swapping appearances.  In truth, there were far fewer unique articles written, but the Google News search shows up all the AP placements and similar (lots of reprinting of this one).  No matter, the coverage is pretty much what you would expect.  The two shows, it sounds like, didn’t quite live up to the billing (though I am sure that super-fans of either O’Reilly or Colbert would say differently).  The funniest moment, as I read it, came during O’Reilly’s appearance on Colbert’s show, described here by Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times.

On Comedy Central, Mr. Colbert suggested that Mr. O’Reilly was a bit of a brawler. Mr. O’Reilly demurred with a joke. “I’m effete,” he protested. “This is all an act.”

Mr. Colbert leaned forward and said in a deep, dramatic voice, “If you’re an act, then what am I?”

My question is this: Is this news, or is it entertainment?  In my print edition of the New York Times, Ms. Stanley’s TV Watch Column appeared on page A16 - in the National News section along side articles about breaking up gang violence in Los Angeles, a nasty and very public row between justices on the Michigan Supreme Court and a host of other serious issues.  In the online version of the Times, the article appears in the Arts section.  It is not uncommmon for the TV Watch column to appear in the main news section — when Ms. Stanley writes about how the State of the Union or some similar political announcement comes across on the tube it gets lumped in with the other national news coverage.  Is the same as coverage of the State of the Union?  After all, nearly all of the non-New York Times coverage seems to have come from entertainment writers like Ms. Stanley — Jake Coyle, the AP’s entertainment reporter, Peter Johnson, who writes the Media Mix column of USA Today, etc.  I haven’t seen where any of those columns appear in the print versions of their respective papers.There is one article by the staff of Editor & Publisher, a group that covers the news media exclusively, but only one so far. 

Two thoughts:  First, the reason this is getting so much coverage, I think, is because the media wants to shed some of its guilt about how much of an entertainment enterprise it has become and how far away from true journalism it has stayed.  They have decided to place the blame on the over-sized ego of Bill O’Reilly and the over-sized fictional ego of Stephen Colbert.  Think about it — both Colbert and O’Reilly are public figures who report on happenings from around the world on their respective shows, and what they say impacts how the rest of the world views those issues.  That makes them part of the news industry. Still, while many people argue that O’Reilly presents hard news and Colbert presents a fictional version of it, in reality, both O’Reilly and Colbert do the same thing – deliver the news to their audience with an extra dose of their own personality added for effect.  Some would argue that the only reason Colbert’s audience gets the news is because of how he presents it - and the same argument could be made about O’Reilly.  That makes them entertainers.  Entertainers aren’t bad, but can they present the news?  Journalists aren’t evil either, but are they entertaining?

Second, I actually believe that the New York Times’ coverage of this event – and more to the point, where they placed it in the print edition – says a lot about the future of media, in a good way.   Alessandra Stanley is a journalist and did in fact report on the meeting of these two television personalities as a news event.  Just because this particular news event is born out of an entertainment focus doesn’t make it any less news — or at least that is no longer for someone like the New York Times to decide.  Her contribution to the Times is just as important as that of Adam Nagourney, and in many ways equally influential when it comes to how the public reads and responds to it.  The placing of the TV Watch column in the main section of the paper is an acknowledgement by the Times that the lines between different types of news  content are now permanently blurred — the audience doesn’t see a difference, so the paper shouldn’t either.  I only wish the New York Times had put the article in the national news section online as well.