A one paper state?

Mainstream media, especially newspapers, continue to struggle in the Internet Age. As I've said before, there remain many questions about what will happen to the mainstream media this decade and beyond. But one things seems clear: The Twin Cities will probably be a one paper town sooner than you'd think. Minnesota will have only one newspaper that reaches a statewide audience. What it will be called, who owns it and what political agenda it may push remain to be seen. What I do know is that we'll be told that the change is good for readers and that investigative and political reporting will remain fair and deep. This will be a lie.

"Good Morning Northland" now hosted by Jim, Pam from "The Office"

For those in the Duluth TV market who watch morning TV, let me recommend the new morning team at WDIO/WIRT Channels 10/13 (the ABC affiliate). Cassie Limpert was named the new Good Morning Northland anchor this week after having filled in for a few weeks. She joins weatherman Kyle Underwood who used to do evening weather.

They're both pretty good (and deceptively tall; the set is like an optical illusion), especially by Duluth standards. But that's not why I'm pointing them out. Limpert and Underwood have this The Office, Season One Jim/Pam thing going on. You know, "just really good friends" in this sort of tortured, cute until she mentions her boyfriend sort of way. I don't know if that's all a gimmick, though I doubt WDIO is sophisticated enough to manufacture that sort of thing.

Anyway, they deliver the news and weather as good as the other guys but add just that little slice of human drama that makes the morning interesting. We like to watch for subtle little comments in the banter and analyze them for any signs of angst or longing. Compare that with the Northland's News Center (the NBC and CBS affiliates) where I haven't quite figured out if they're experimenting with crude android technology on their morning show. By any measure, Good Morning Northland is just good TV.

Souls of future candidates at stake in Democratic race

Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic has a good post today putting perspective on the situation for Barack Obama and his supporters.

Watching shows like "Good Morning America" and any of the 24-hour cable news networks reminds me that the national media is increasingly devoid of perspective. Hence why the last 72 hours of news has focused on Obama's former preacher's speaking tour.

You know, I used to be upset that the hyper-charged media coverage was producing national candidates unwilling to take risks or say what they mean. "Serious" candidates were those that spent decades of their life avoiding anything that would be considered controversial, resulting in more vacuous, poll-driven politicians who suppress their practical strengths in the interest of political victory. But this latest cycle, with the focus on Obama's past minister the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, carries another risk for future politicians. If Obama is dragged down the only successful future candidates will be those who not only purge their own biographies of political will, but who are also willing to purge their lives of any loved ones or associates who hold unpopular views. In other words: soulless, vacuous, poll-driven politicians. Oh, boy!

To me, that's why it's more important than ever that the Democratic Party nominate Barack Obama and get him elected President. We've learned that he's not perfect, but he still provides a strong vision and an extraordinary contrast to the conventional wisdom of today's lousy political culture. This is a generational political struggle. The thing about struggles is that they often involve struggling. Struggle on!

Debate analysis: Media hungry! Media feed!

From the wooded wilderness in the shadow of the Mesabi Iron Range's western ridge, I offer a brief commentary on the national political scene.

The progressive blogs are hammering last night's ABC Democratic Presidential debate moderated by Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos (along with more objective media critics and journalism experts). I'm glad that I purposely avoided watching it because I feared the debate would go down this way. I have since read the transcripts and agree that the thing was a disaster. The first half was relegated to tough but largely trivial questions primarily focused against the frontrunner Barack Obama. Vast swaths of important issues were ignored, including the economy and health care. And yes, Obama's performance was only so-so while Clinton was polished but unappealing in her zeal to join in the mud-fest. Basically, no one won, which is what is being repeated all over the Internet today.

I mean, really. "Do you believe Rev. Wright loves America as much as you, Sen. Obama?" and questions about why Obama doesn't wear flag pins. That's a Toby Keith song, not a debate.

Here's my unique contribution to the day-after debate, however. A lot of people are arguing that this debate had an anti-Obama or pro-Hillary bias. And on the surface it could seem that way, but the truth is much more depressing. I have long contended that the national media is neither liberal nor conservative. The national media is a hulking, bloodthirsty animal focused on self-gratification and preservation. It will feed on any ideology so long as its checks keep cashing. Last night, ABC did everything it could to keep the Democratic nomination race A) alive and B) ugly -- two things that will provide another good month of ratings and revenue for the national news media.

I watch "ABC World News" every night and "This Week" every Sunday morning. I basically like and respect Gibson and Stephanopoulos. But this was a very bad debate and spoke very poorly of political discourse in America today. The polls won't move, the results won't be affected, but everyone will feel just a little bit dirtier on the inside. Hooray for the Fourth Estate!

Brown (not) on the Air: Join KAXE!

"Between You and Me," the KAXE program for which I contribute weekly essays, is taking a one-week hiatus at the conclusion of the independent public station's spring fundraising drive this Saturday. Instead of listening to my inane ramblings, I encourage you to join or renew your membership in KAXE right now. You can do it online at http://www.kaxe.org/ or by calling (218) 326-1234.

Remember, KAXE is the last great hope for the free media. It's a 100,000 watt station with local news, music for all tastes, community involvement and all things good about the medium of radio (and Internet, for that matter). It's something that we in Northern Minnesota (and anywhere else, by way of the WWW) are lucky to have and should support regardless of our political ideology, musical taste or ethnic origins. Believe me, they take all kinds.

Join!

Denny Anderson faces health issues

Dennis Anderson is the Walter Cronkite of northern Minnesota. The Duluth News-Tribune reports today that Anderson, evening anchor of the top-rated Duluth newscast at WDIO/WIRT, is fighting prostate cancer. The prognosis is good, according to the report. Still, thoughts and prayers go out to the dean of Northland media.

For those outside northern Minnesota, Anderson is the only mustachioed anchor in a mid-sized or larger market and certainly the only mustachioed anchor to dominate all competitors in the Nielsons. We dig mustaches. That's how we roll around here.

CBS/CNN deal would further blur media lines

According to a report from the New York Times, CBS is considering a partnership with CNN that would have the cable news network provide content to the network once represented by Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. If you read the story you see that these talks are very preliminary and that there's plenty of room for this to unravel. I bring it up because it connects to some of my theories about how media changes are playing out.

We're already seeing the blurring of lines between cable and network TV news. MSNBC started that process and this CBS/CNN deal would keep it going. Eventually, the lines between TV and Internet news, indeed the line between TV and the Internet, will blur until we have a new kind of screen in our house that serves both functions.

I don't know if Katie Couric will be on this FutureScreen but I guess we'll all find out soon enough. All I know is that they need to figure out how to keep this screen humming when God drops two feet of snow on Balsam Township, Minnesota.

UPDATE: CBS and CNN are denying the reports, or at least downplaying them. I'm betting they were talking about this but that it leaked way too early.

The future of small town media in 1,000 words

A really interesting comment about local newspaper websites crossed the blog yesterday morning. As you may know, the ACM family of newspapers on the Iron Range now require readers to sign up for a free account to use its newspapers’ websites. A MinnesotaBrown blog reader responded to the change in this way:

What the hell are they thinking with this "free account" crap? I refuse to register. I find their sites difficult to use, and damned annoying in that they don't include all the articles. In fact, I've pretty much quit going to the sites at all because they try to make it hard for me to use their sites, in the apparent hope that by doing so, I'll buy a paper.Well. I don't. I am not a newspaper reader. I don't buy newspapers, and I'm not about to start buying them. I DO go to websites to read news. Presumably they derive ad revenue from the advertisers on their website who count on me to buy their goods and services just like those who advertise in the paper assume there is a connection between readers and sales.

I feel the Range papers are marginalizing their online readers. They are marginalizing the potential of their online business. And they are marginalizing their future existence.

The comment prompted this thought on my part. If and when the storied “e-Media Revolution” that people keep talking about happens (the time when the Internet finally and fully absorbs the functions of "old media" like newspapers and broadcast TV) the first wall that crumbles won't be the big city daily papers or CNN, but the small town newspapers and local TV news affiliates. This massive change will happen from the ground up.

These are my own thoughts based on my experience as a college communication instructor, former Iron Range small town daily newspaper editor and current writer and blogger. I still write for the Hibbing Daily Tribune, so it's important to note that I'd like to keep that job and that I'm not picking on that publication (or its parent company and affiliates), nor can I reveal any trade secrets (if I ever really knew any). But I can talk generally about the struggles that small town papers face in the Internet Age.

Here’s the problem. Let’s consider a hypothetical small town newspaper that had a circulation of, say, 15,000 in 1988. This paper has probably lost half its readers since. Today’s circulation, 6,000-7,000, consists of people disproportionately older and less Internet savvy than the population at large. Meantime, new readers were learning that they could get a good deal of what they wanted from this hypothetical paper’s website. Papers without a website were openly mocked by the Web-proficient members of their community, to the point where all papers adopted websites. As these websites developed, enthusiastic news people realized that the Internet is a really great medium for the written word and the websites grew in popularity.

But web readers got the product for free, advertisers weren’t willing to pay much to get on the website and the whole effort was costing the industry gabuldyjillions of dollars (an approximation). Newspapers were well aware this was happening and their leaders held numerous meetings (believe me). Some tried password protecting their web versions, but few would pay to read the papers online. Others tried making their web versions so awesome that they could entice advertisers to buy online ads. Some customers did, but this still didn’t make up the revenue.

Let me crystallize the problem: More people (and most young people) are using the Internet to receive news, but no one has figured out how to make as much money operating an online news site as newspapers USED TO be able to make before the Internet. Because media consolidation has driven up the debt service on your average small town paper to well above what is financially prudent, the old revenue figures are crucial to maintaining company stock prices. Unless this problem is figured out (and that ship may have sailed) we are trolling toward a total media realignment that will begin not with the New York Times, but with all the small papers about the size of the Anytown Whig-Observer. When these weeklies, small dailies and mid-sized papers in competitive markets realize that their revenue has fallen so low that it is equal to what they could make off the Internet alone AND when a majority of their readers are already on the Internet (two things not yet true, but coming), they’ll reconfigure. Add in the fact that many newspapers are now either owned by or in some kind of partnership with a local television network affiliate, and we’re talking about united, multi-media news operations functioning with the same editorial staff and disseminating news on TV and high-end websites, or perhaps a yet unknown combination of the two.

Oh, but there will be hundreds of bankruptcies and tens of thousands of layoffs before this occurs, so let’s not get too excited.

I teach blogging seminars for the KAXE Community Journalism Project. I’m not speaking for them either when I say this. But there is an efficiency argument that the Internet is a much more cost effective way to gather and share news in small towns. Over time, I could easily see community news websites that combine video, audio and print content replacing the old media. We definitely aren’t there yet, but nonprofit community journalism operations like KAXE are way out ahead of commercial companies in small towns. Streaming media on the big sites like http://www.cnn.com/, http://www.msnbc.com/ and http://www.foxnews.com/ is great – and will remain the standard into the future. But the “revolution” won’t really be at hand until the dams break in small and medium markets. When it happens, the results will be part chaotic, part fascinating and most assuredly remarkable. And while people in today's media industry will be affected negatively at first, it's important to remember that we will still need journalists, editors, technicians, graphic designers and photographers in this new media.

Now, there’s no reason that my current employer (I hope still current after speaking this heresy) and its sister publications on the Iron Range can’t survive or even thrive through all of this, but doing so will require a nimble approach when the majority of their readers make the leap to the Internet. None of this will happen next year, but I expect that it will happen before long. And it will happen in every corner of the world.

Even, perhaps especially, here on the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota (U.S.A., the World, the Universe).

PS: And for those who prefer political posts, I'll leave you with this: the biggest uncontrollable variable in the budget of a small town paper is the cost of employee health care. Guess what happens as a result? Layoffs and a gradually crappier health care plan.

Internet changing the nature of news?

Here's an interesting column from Swampland's Michael Scherer on how the Internet has changed the ebb and flow of the national news media.

Here is a basic shift that has occurred in the news business: Because of the Internet, you, the reader, no longer have to buy information in pre-fabricated packages like “newspapers.” You can just go online and individually select the articles you want to read. And there are lots of websites and blogs to help you out. Every day, Matt Drudge, the Huffington Post, Yahoo, Google, Swampland, or a hundred other different bloggers, will pre-select articles for you and provide links. You choose your own adventure.

There is a corollary effect here: As the value of the package declines, the value of the individual article increases. Online, news organizations charge advertisers based on the number of hits they can get on a site. And since the hits are often coming for specific stories, and not the entire site, a blockbuster story that gets linked to, say, Drudge, is money in the bank.

This means that the competition on the level of the individual story is more intense than ever before, and there is enormous pressure to distinguish yourself from the pack. Assume, for instance, that 12 news organizations do the same story on the same day about how Hillary Clinton has a tough road ahead of her to get the nomination. Which story is going to get the most links and therefore the most readers? Is it the one that cautiously weighs the pros and cons, and presents a nuanced view of her chances? Or is it the one that says she is toast, and anyone who thinks different is living on another planet?

OMG! George Clooney, Renee Zellweger coming to Duluth!

At the top of the Duluth News-Tribune on this important news day is the BIGGEST STORY OF ALL TIME. George Clooney is coming to Duluth. WITH RENEE ZELLWEGER.




AT THE SAME TIME!



Oh Jesus, my heart. My heart is beating SO FAST right now.

Rumors have been swirling for awhile that George Clooney might be coming to Duluth to promote his new movie "Leatherheads." Turns out the rumor is true, and it gets better: costar Renee Zellweger is coming, too.

The duo will be at the Lake Superior Railroad Museum in the Depot for a press conference on Monday.

Unfortunately for stargazers, the event is only open to credentialed members of the media.

Duluth will be the first stop on the film's four-city "Whistle Stop Express" tour. Other stops include Maysville, Ky.; Salisbury, N.C., and Greenville, S.C.

Don't worry, as you can see protective measures are being taken so that only credentialed media may gaze directly upon Clooney and Zellweger. Right now, the region's reporters are clambering for press passes as some sort of meager reward for their long hours of low paid professional labor. If you happen to be a public official looking to violate the oath of your office, you have free reign anytime between now and Monday.

I am posting a new poll about this topic on the right column. Join in!

Movie stars George Clooney and Renee Zellweger will appear in at the Lake Superior Railroad Museum in Duluth on Monday, March 24. What will be the topic of the first amusing ice-breaking comment uttered by a famous person?

• The weather (cold)
• Something funny about the trains
• The primitave wardrobes of the press corps
• No talk, just skin

Brown on the Air: Souvenirs and 'C is for Comfort Food'

I am a triple media threat this weekend. Jump back!

Old Media (TV): I will be baking fudge bars using a recipe from Bob Dylan's mom's personal file on "C is for Comfort Food" on WDSE Channel 8 in Northern Minnesota from 1-4:30 p.m. this Saturday, March 1. I promise to tell you the story of how that happened next week.

Older Media (Radio): As usual, an essay of mine will be featured on Saturday's "Between You and Me" on 91.7 KAXE, streaming online at http://www.kaxe.org/. The topic for the call-in/music show this week is "Souvenirs: Things that remind us of trips and special times as we battle cabin fever." The show airs from 10 a.m. to noon on KAXE.

Oldest Media (newspaper): My column runs as usual in the Hibbing Daily Tribune this Sunday. I'll post it here over the weekend. It's about the "Tobacco Monologues" we have seen cropping up around Minnesota bars, hastily produced "plays" that are used to defy the new state smoking ban by exploiting a loophole for theatrical productions that use cigarettes.

New Media? This is it. It's happening RIGHT NOW. Convergence, baby. I'm still broke, but damn if I'm not converged.