Amos Gelb • February 11, 2015

Dear Buzzfeed, Suck it.

So, Mr. I’m-too-sexy-for-the-internet: How does it feel to have a grandma teach you to suck eggs?

Yeah, you. “So what am I going to do with the $50-million infusion of venture capital, and a valuation that puts me somewhere near $850 million, all for cats and stuff.”

Meet the “it” kid in town. The cool thing everyone has been talking about. The one that is so retro it is avant-garde. The one that said nanosecond attention spans be damned.

How about seven hours’ worth? And just people talking?

Oh, baby – old school is back!

Radio. Yes, radio – that medium so old that its college roommate was the dial telephone. Or, more precisely, radio in the replayable form of podcasting and one series in particular called “Serial”: the eight-part investigation into a Baltimore murder, the young man serving life in prison, the former friend whose testimony put him away and the questions surrounding the case.
It was so popular that 1.5 million people reportedly tuned in each week.

But more than numbers, it was buzz. Old media – a great story well told without pictures – was a hit, even with the clickbait-addicted generation in their 20s. When asked what he thought, one member of the social media glitterati almost went into a trance: “I binge-listened!” Forget binge-drinking, binge-listening!

For All Things Media, the significance of “Serial” is its defiance of all the woe-be-us punditry condemning the state of media today. Yes, there is a lot of very poor stuff out there, but there is a lot of imaginative content being created. And radio, the medium that was written off as dead half a century ago, has become a hotbed for innovation, much of it harkening back to traditions of old.

If you haven’t listened, try NPR’s “TED Radio Hour” or “Radiolab” or “This American Life,” the show that spawned “Serial.”

So while Jimmy Fallon was turning the “Tonight Show” into a late-night goliath string of YouTube segments, the buzz at the end of the year was a good old-fashioned murder mystery, told with sound alone in 30-to-50-minute bites by Sarah Koenig.

It succeeded very simply because it was worth listening to.

And in the age of free, it turns out people are willing to pay for something that they perceive gives them value. In this case, listeners replied virtually overnight to a request for support by bankrolling season two of “Serial” with donations.

That is nothing new. That is public radio’s model. What was different: the audience includes people who have never even thought of a radio as something they might actually buy. Why would they? The internet is free, after all.

Now the hard part comes…can Koenig and her team do it again?

Amos Gelb • January 29, 2015

Goodbye 2014 – Hello 2015

Rather than look back, I thought perhaps a way to start 2015 was to look forward and see some of the fun that might be to come. So here are 10 big media things to keep an eye on:

1. Local Television

2014 ended with a big shuffle. Sinclair Broadcast Group took the reins of WJLA and longtime news director/station guru Bill Lord headed out that door and straight up Wisconsin to the ailing WUSA. Can he repeat his magic farther up the dial? How will WJLA fare under new ownership with a news operation that takes its marching orders from a centralized news hierarchy?

2. The Washington Post

There’s a lot of new energy now that the Age of Bezos has dawned. New culture, new publisher (Fred Ryan, the former general from WJLA and Politico) and new building will generate plenty of armchair analysis.

3. Social Media Bloopers

What will be the next great faux pas to enliven our humdrum lives? It’s been a while since a Weiner popped up, and everyone has now learned that you don’t dis the Obama gals. But it is the gift that keeps on giving. More to come, guaranteed.

4. Radical Fundamentalists

What will they come up with next in their unfortunately very effective media strategy, and will legitimate governments finally figure out a way to counteract them?

5. Net Neutrality

This is the single most important issue facing anybody who uses the internet for anything. The outcome, to be decided this year, will define all our worlds.

6. Hometown Machiavellis

Will Frank Underwood and Olivia Pope, the lead characters of the shows “House of Cards” and “Scandal,” continue to give us Washingtonian the guilty pleasure of thinking that we are indeed smarter than everyone else (oh, come on, don’t deny it)?

7. The New Republic

TNR is dead, long live TNR. Can the Facebook-billionaire owner really reinvent the icon of American liberalism after its very public self-immolation at the close of 2014?

8. CNN

President Obama joked last year that CNN was in search of its dignity. The big question for 2015 is whether it can find its identity. The Network of Record has been best known more recently for its endless coverage of events long after there is nothing to say (along with the uninformed wanderings of a misanthropic cook).

9. Voice of America

Less on the radar but still important: What is the future of VOA? Elements in Congress seem intent on making it a propaganda agency, while the journalists who work there are committed to journalism. The venerable agency’s survival is by no means assured.

10. Colbert

Finally, the biggest and most pressing unknown in all of American media for 2015: Colbert. What will he look like now that he has shed his Comedy Central persona and moved into his new CBS chair? And just as important, can he challenge the Grand Wizard of Late Night, Jimmy Fallon?

ATM is all a-Twitter to see (or at least something social).

Amos Gelb • January 16, 2015

# JesuisCharlie, or to be more precise, # NoussommesCharlie.

In the aftermath of the tragic and horrific attack on the French version of the Onion satirical magazine (could we imagine that happening here?) there are two things that stand out.

First: Charlie Hedo-deniers – those like Hofstra University Professor Hussein Rashid’s recent column in the Washington Post that describe the French magazine content as racist.

Perhaps it was, but considering how small the magazine’s readership was in France isn’t it a bit ironic that critics like Rashid, who may never heard of the magazine until the shooting and almost certainly do not have a subscription, propound with such absolute confidence in characterizing its contents? Easy to snipe at a dead editor!

Charlie Hebdo might have been inappropriate at times, but it is time for arm chair commentators like Rashid to stop this blame-transferring and get back to the simple fact – the problem was not Hebdo or its content – it was the guys with the guns.

That sort of logic echoes the misplaced commentary after 9-11 of headlines like “why do they hate us?” as if those attacks were somehow justified.

Second: we all want to know whether these murderous thugs were talking to like-minded nuts in the U.S. – and, if so, who are they? The obvious question: are they setting the stage for similar attacks in the U.S.?

But how can we find that out? How can our national security apparatus protect us, because if an attack like this should happen the fingers will inevitably start pointing?

The answer includes checking the telephone records and using them to catch would-be attackers before they get started. But hang on. Haven’t we just had a gut-wrenching national debate over just that kind of bulk telephony metadata collection? Patriot Act Section 215 ring any bells?

“End it!” “Violation of civil rights!” “Police state!” The general charge – that sort of thing is un-American.

Section 215 expires in June and privacy advocates are screaming not to renew it. It is a new world, an unfriendly world, and Hebdo frightening points out – a world that is coming. Might All Things Media suggest that the idea of gathering this kind of data – without safeguards about personal identification until actions like #JesuisCharlie triggers more investigation — is not such a bad idea.

This is so that we don’t have to read columns that suggest somehow we were somehow asking for it, when Hebdo barbarism happens here.

Amos Gelb • December 19, 2014

Yes, one more story about Ferguson. Neither about injustice nor lack of empathy. Neither about racism nor out-of-control cops.

This one is about Ferguson’s final victim: Louis Head, stepfather to the teenager, Michael Brown, whose death triggered recent events. Head shouted, “Burn the b* down!” He is now under criminal investigation for inciting a riot. On the Wednesday after the riots, Head issued an apology. Indeed, it is hard to argue that he did not say it, did not say it angrily and did not mean it at the time. It is there in color footage and high-definition sound, from various angles.

And yet, the pictures and sound lie. Head did yell those angry profanities, but in reality the only people who heard him were those pointing high-density, directional microphones at him.

Yet he is likely in some serious jeopardy, thanks to the media.

The evidence is right there in those very subtitled video clips played over and over.

It starts with Brown’s mother choking back tears as she reacts to the decision not to indict the police officer, who killed her teenager. From the various angles there appear to be several thousand people gathered, surrounding the makeshift stage, and there is relative quiet as Brown’s mother speaks. And then as she breaks down, Head climbs up to embrace his wife, and, overcome with emotion, he turns and starts yelling his famous epithet.

Listen to the unenhanced audio, and you can barely make out what he is saying. By that time, there is so much noise with so many people screaming that it is hard to make out what he is saying even from a microphone close to him. CNN helped that poor audio by subtitling.

Furthermore, that same shot that shows the crowd also shows that the circle closest to Head and his wife is filled with cameras, many with the strongest available directional microphones. If anyone could hear him, it was the media.

Head yelled, but nobody could hear him. If he is being indicted only for his comment the question has to be “Whom did he incite?” The Supreme Court has ruled you cannot yell fire in a movie theatre – but what if nobody hears you?

This is not the first time the microphone has lied. In 2004, struggling presidential candidate Howard Dean was finally sunk, when a microphone caught him uttering an animalistic yell during a campaign rally. People in the room recalled it was so loud that nobody could hear him but the yell was picked up by the directional microphone he was holding and into the footnotes of history Dean slid.

There’s a word for this: “context.” We just don’t seem to be able to do that very well in the 24-hour news cycle. In Ferguson, we needed it more than anything else.

Amos Gelb •

What a way to end the year: Bill Cosby and the University of Virginia.

If you have been in media detox since the election, let me bring up to speed. The media has been swarmed by allegations that the avuncular and legendary comedian was less uncle and more molester. They have turned from a trickle to legacy-ending torrent with evidence apparently mounting as quickly as it is receding from the blockbuster and now infamous Rolling Stone magazine expose of on-campus rape at the hallowed halls of the college Thomas Jefferson established.

But this is less about the stories themselves and more the significance that “All Things Media” believes these two stories has for the state of American journalism and our society as a whole.

The news is “We still care!” It may seem an obvious, trite comment. While traditional journalists are bemoaning the end of journalism and Colbert is more influential than the network anchors combined, it is worth noting.

In the age of Facebook and social media where what goes for news is now curated by anarchy rather than self-appointed newsrooms, as depressing as these two stories are, there is good news. The good news is that for all the media turmoil, we as a society still want, need, value and expect what traditional journalism has always been about: factual, reliable information.

In the case of Cosby, the media has played the role of ensuring, even belatedly, that Dr. Huxtable does not escape at least some culpability – even if it is yet to play out.

However, in the case of Rolling Stone’s reportage, the key is not of calling to account of the magazine but rather that fact that we are all so outraged that this article could have been so shoddily mismanaged. In an age, when the Washington Post says that only a third of its online audience comes through its webpage and rely as much on the referral of our friends as to what we read and watch, this outrage is good.

It is good because we care. We want people to uncover stuff, and we demand that what is uncovered is accurate. It may not be in the form that traditional journalists want to see it, and it certainly won’t be from the organizations they would prefer.

As we end the year, it is nice to know that for all the dislocation of the changing media world one things hold constant: we want to know, we expect to know — and accuracy still matters.

Amos Gelb • September 25, 2014

Dear media,

Really? I mean, come on.

I get it. President Obama is an easy mark. He is not exactly riding a wave of adulation at the moment. There are legitimate questions about how his team is handling an array of the tumultuous issues that have made this summer anything but lazy.

These issues have not been easy: from the domestic maelstrom of Ferguson and the coming water wars of the West to the monstrous Islamic State that has now defined itself in its barbaric murder of Jim Foley, the unrepentant would-be Soviet-reconstituter Vladimir Putin, the embarrassment and neutering of the Secretary of State over Gaza and an Afghanistan that seems poised to fall even further apart if that were possible.

So, I say again: really?

I understand that news organizations pay a lot of money to camp their staff out on Martha’s Vineyard to cover the President. They have to. A news executive once described covering the President around the clock: “It is a death watch. We have to be there just in case he dies.” They also have to justify that expense by actually covering the President when his staff decides he should break from his much needed vacation to make news.

But . . . really?

There are, indeed, those who have problems with everything this President does — from policy to his simply being President. Whatever your political stripe, there are legitimate issues that deserve to be raised.

But this has now gotten silly.

After the President delivered his clearly heartfelt remarks about Foley (Could anyone actually feign anything in response to that barbarism?), major news organizations reported that Obama was back on the golf course barely 20 minutes later. Then, Twitter took over. Implied: could this man be so heartless to talk about this death and then go share a few chuckles on the links? What a monster!

CNN even had five minutes of silent footage from a distance of the President playing with three others. And look: he was chuckling and taking a few swings.

Wherever you stand, this is ridiculous. And it is unfair.

Look at Obama’s hair. It has gone white. ATM would suggest that nobody other than another former President can comprehend the stress of that job. I am actually glad my President (any President) is trying to get away for at least a few days. If that means pretending there is nothing but an infuriating white ball for a few hours, ATM wishes him well.

While the President has forfeited just about all rights to privacy outside an enclosed space, the core of all journalism is responsibility. The framing of this golf outing as juxtaposed with a statement on an unspeakable tragedy by responsible journalists does a disservice to the audience and the industry.

Leave that to the ranters who prowl the internet. They do that kind of stuff far better than you.

So, I ask again. Really? Give me (him) a break.

Yours in dismay,

ATM

Amos Gelb • September 10, 2014

Poor Jennifer Lawrence. Her nude photos posted, blasted, shared, across numerous websites. A naughty snap secured on that mysterious thing called the cloud. And the digital thugs who ripped it from the nether regions of some server somewhere. Foul, foul, foul!

But hang on, Edward Snowden is hailed as a hero for making public classified information from the NSA showing that the top secret agency was spying on Americans. Is there a difference between the two cases? Are both Snowden and the faceless server-Peeping Toms villains?

By now, half of readers are screaming that the two were completely different – one was a private invasion and the other a public good. The other half are cheering. But that is the point – our media is not just changing what we can share and how we share – but our very concepts of what privacy means. And if you are not thinking about that every time you use the Internet, or take a pic and post anywhere, caveat emptor!

“There is no such thing as privacy anymore!” exclaimed one of the country’s leading privacy experts, who asked not to be named, when asked about how she would define privacy today. “Only a fool would still think that you could put anything anywhere connected to the web and truly believe it won’t be gotten by others.”

Privacy. Such a quaint notion. In the old days JLaw would have either taken photos with a Polaroid, had the film developed (yes they could have been stolen then but then she knew she was giving the naughties to them and crossing her fingers they wouldn’t look) or used a digital camera with a chip that you then put on your computer and printed. To get the pics you would either have to steal them from the photolab or break into her house. Privacy was an easier concept – and invading that privacy was so much more clear cut.

Now beware. Snapchat, the photo messaging application, was supposed to guarantee privacy. You could share a picture privately with a friend and not worry about it being more than that because it disappeared in a few seconds. Gone forever. Well at least that was how it was meant to work. Then it was revealed that those revealing Snapchats lived on far, far longer. And if they lived on longer, then they could be JLaw’ed.

Nothing is sacred. For those of you inclined, Google tracks your porn searches. Moreover, check the cookies on your computer and realize what you gave up by just turning on that desktop/laptop. You will be amazed how many companies you have never heard of and to whom you did you did not give consent to access your computer, have planted their tracking code on your device. ATM suggests periodically cleaning out all website data, at a minimum.

If you have allowed a phone app to use your location info – you are now essentially carrying the same thing as an ankle bracelet used to track felons. You are not the only one who can launch the “find my iPhone.”

But perhaps there is hope. A recent Pew study says that people are far less likely to share their political views on social media when they think a majority of others might disagree. So at least we seem to be keeping our political thoughts to ourselves a bit.
So maybe that’s the secret. If you want to keep it private – pass that note in class. Or just don’t take those photos in the first place.

But in the meantime, we are all Jennifer Lawrence, just without the fame and the hacked photos, at least as far as we know.

Amos Gelb is the founder and director of the Washington Media Institute.

Amos Gelb •

I never took Sara Just for a masochist. The incredibly smart, able, talented and – by the way – thoroughly nice ABC News senior executive was just named the head of the venerable PBS NewsHour.

In today’s media, venerable is not a good thing.

Venerable is revered. Venerable means gravitas. Venerable means nobody is watching anymore, which, regrettably, is increasingly the case for the NewsHour. There was barely any notice paid to the pronouncement that the revered Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff would assume the co-anchor chairs.
And Sara Just is going to save it –- although she coyly is not saying how.

But what is she trying to save?

It is a completely new news ecosystem that seemed to have changed enough already the last few months and then decided it was only just getting started (a cap doffing to Al Pacino’s immortal diatribe in “Scent of a Woman”).

Just announced: Gannett is breaking the newspapers off from everything else. Why? The first Silver Line train to Gannett’s headquarters in Reston must have been carrying a magic vision of the future.

Recently announced: Tribune papers doing something similar. That mess many know about.

Previously announced: Digital First – the force that was going to drive local papers truly into the new age decided to simply shut its doors. Literally out of the blue.

Mashable/Buzzfeed – two distinctly non-general news organizations – deciding that the future is in good old-fashioned journalism and are hiring staffs.
The most venerable New York Times slitting its own wrists in a leaked internal memo saying that its digital strategy simply did not cut it.

The oddball Vice Television is beefing up to become one of the major forces in international reporting.

And yet, venerable refuses to give up. About a year ago, the venerable Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism issued a much-promoted report called “Post Industrial Journalism.” Its authors, C.W. Anderson, Emily Bell and Clay Shirky wrote in their opening paragraph: “much of [journalism’s] future is already here and… there is no such thing as the news industry anymore.”

Could they have been more wrong? Once more an incident of venerable over-thinking its own importance.

So, what does Sara have up her sleeve? Nothing short of rejuvenating the term “venerable.” If she succeeds, she will offer a road map for all media trapped by its own history. If she doesn’t, well, don’t let anyone call you “venerable.”

Amos Gelb • May 5, 2014

Forget the round ball – Clipper-gate is turning into a massive game of paintball – and let’s see who gets shamed next. It is a wonderful lesson in the media, sparing no one.

Mr. Sterling, ye of “Don’t bring blacks to my game,” got this all started.

But then the alleged would-be-was-but-not-likely-to-be-anymore girlfriend (of mixed ethnicity no less) comes under the cloud of surreptitiously recording and seemingly entrapping an old man, potentially committing a felony by recording him without explicit permission (that gets into complicated state wire-tapping law and not worth the legal explication.)

Add to the list the chorus decrying the horrors of racism, including the NAACP whose local chapter had previously given Sterling an achievement award (that one was particularly delicious).

The NBA that has known Mr. Sterling has not been sterling for a long time, but it has never seen fit to call him on it except when his private malapropism threatens its very lucrative playoffs.

How about the networks, such as TMZ, that has become the racism-outing platform of record and then joined NBC in announcing an incorrect penalty minutes before the NBA commissioner announced what he had actually decided? (A media side note: David Gregory, the embattled “Meet the Press” anchor had to offer the apologies which cannot have helped his stock).

And it hardly seems the game has stopped.

How about the players and coach, whose disgust with their paymaster extended to turning their practice jerseys inside out? Rosa Parks, move over. Would it be too much to suggest that if they were that disgusted they should have not turned their shirts inside out but just turned their shirts in – as in quit – refused to play – say, “I will not take this bigot’s money”? Are they under contract? Sure. But what is the price of disgust? The legendary Doc Rivers, a player and coach role model if ever there was one, doesn’t need to worry about money. With all respect, Mr. Rivers, if there were ever a moment for you to show young men of all colors that sometimes you have to say enough, this would seem to be it.

Oh, and those fans. Can’t they just walk with their feet and their dollars? Nothing will get a Sterling sale quicker than losing money. But there seemed to be plenty of ticket-buying Clipper fans in the stands paying too much for concessions.

But it was different, I hear aficionados exclaim. It was the playoffs! So racism is only a walkable-offense during the regular season?

And then it was all safe, because the NBA banned Mr. Sterling for life.

But the funny thing about the media today is that there is nowhere to hide. There is no impunity anymore, even when there is a lifetime ban to hide behind. There is just a large magnifying glass looking for hypocrisy, plenty of which Mr. Sterling’s mouth seems to have lured into the open.

It makes one pine for the simpler times of OJ. Bring on the vitriol for that one.