Journalist Malcolm Gladwell: "Stop going to journalism programs"

Author/journalist Malcolm Galdwell ("Tipping Point," "Blink," "Outliers")gave this advice to young journalists in a 2009 Time interview:

The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

In a 2011 Nation piece, Michael Tracey wrote: "...if you take a full major’s worth of journalism classes, that’s about twelve (or however many) less classes in the humanities that could’ve equipped you with an intellectual framework from which to approach your work."

Why don't we have independent public TV like this in US?

Weeks before the Iraq invasion, the BBC's Jeremy Paxman and skeptical British citizens literally cross-examined Prime Minister Tony Blair about evidence/reasons/legality behind the invasion -- an interview whose transcript and Blair's comments became part of Britain's official Iraq inquiry in 2011. (Here's another tough Paxman interview of Blair . . . having nothing to do with Iraq.)

In our country, pressure from politicians + lack of insulated funding = embarrassing timidity at so-called "public television"...as evidenced by PBS surgically removing Tina Fey's comedic swipes at Sarah Palin from a broadcast in November 2010.

Country by country comparisons of spending on public broadcasting here. 

Jon Stewart's mock interview of Rupert Murdoch

Jon Stewart gently asks questions of Murdoch about "Murdochopoly." The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is even more deferential to Murdoch and other media moguls than Stewart.  (Years ago, Murdoch famously said: "Monopoly is a terrible thing, until you have it.")

Are we losing fast, open Internet in USA?

In the opening scene of Outfoxed, media scholar Robert McChesney explains how big media corporations (acting almost like gangsters) have made media policy behind closed doors, out of public view, dividing up the cake among themselves. 

In recent studies, USA was behind other countries when it comes to access to broadband (15th place) and Internet speed  (23rd place).

There's a digital divide in our country whereby upper-middle-class kids grow up with fast Web-accessed computers at home, while kids in some rural areas and inner cities don't have fast Internet, or even computers.

In 2009, big Internet providers such as Verizon, Comcast, AT&T DID NOT APPLY for any of the billions in federal stimulus grants for expanding broadband infrastructure, according to the Wall St. Journal, because recipients of our tax money had to agree to respect Net Neutrality or Internet non-discrimination.

In August 2010, Keith Olbermann did a segment about Net Neutrality on his soon-to-end MSNBC show. Olbermann exited MSNBC as it was being taken over by Comcast, which lobbies against Net Neut. (Here's Jon Stewart's Net Neutrality segment from the same period.)

P.S. In January 2011, I was asked to appear on a talk-radio show on a big city station to analyze Oblermann's exit from MSNBC; when I suggested a link to the Comcast takeover and criticized Comcast's opposition to Net Neutrality, a producer asked me during a commercial break to stop the "Comcast-bashing" because "they're our biggest sponsor."

Did blog inject video distortions into mainstream media?

The late Andrew Breitbart, a former Drudge Report staffer, ran BigGovernment.com and other websites. In July 2010, the Obama White House fired US Dept of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod soon after BigGovernment posted a 100-second video excerpt purporting to show that, during a speech to the NAACP, Sherrod had boasted about discriminating against a white farmer while she was a federal employee during the Obama administration. Actually, as Breitbart later semi-corrected, Sherrod was describing events in the 1980s when she was Georgia field director for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a nonprofit that had grown out of the civil rights movement to help Black farmers. More importantly, a fuller version of the speech aired by CNN indicated that Sherrod told the story to illustrate how she had overcome her racial hostility toward whites and ultimately helped the white farmer save his farm.

Months earlier, other selectively-edited tapes distributed by BigGovernment.com (played repeatedly on Fox News and elsewhere) helped put the anti-poverty group ACORN out of business. Rachel Maddow dissects the distorted presentation that doomed ACORN. (Fox News had goaded others in media for not doing enough ACORN-smearing.)

It wasn't just Fox News that promoted BigGovernment.com's misleading ACORN story. The Public Editor of the paper of record, the New York Times, went to absurd lengths to defend his paper's inaccurate coverage

When Drudge posts "Exclusive," readers beware

Perhaps Matt Drudge should stick to aggregating content from elsewhere (often with revved-up headlines) rather than "report" -- as demonstrated by this 1999 "world exclusive," which helped push the story into mainstream media.

And as demonstrated by his 2007 "exclusive" in which he accused CNN reporter Michael Ware of "heckling" Republican senators during a news conference in Iraq and "laughing and mocking their comments." Drudge's evidence-free charge -- based on an anonymous "official" -- was picked up by rightwing blogs and the Washington Times. Video of the news conference showed Ware hadn't opened his mouth.

Monetizing and Illustrating our Blogs

Alex L. has decided to get rich for her blogging, so has agreed to let Google AdSense messages accompany her blog. (To send her a couple pennies, I clicked on the chocolate ad.)  Kristen M. (and others) are embedding graphics in her posts.

Can bloggers/columnists with strong views . . .

. . . still engage in independent commentary -- as opposed to partisan propaganda? Here is some critical commentary from the conservative National Review Online within hours of John McCain selecting Sarah Palin as his running-mate in April 2008.

Undercover video-taping of farm animal abuse...

...has prompted "food libel" or "food disparagement" laws in a dozen states, aimed at protecting powerful agribusiness interests that apparently have much to hide. Here's a video report from U.C. Berkeley News21 students.

Election 2008: Mayhill Fowler's citizen journalism for HuffPost's "Off the Bus" project

Mayhill Fowler says she didn't hide that she was recording ex-President Clinton's angry words ("sleazy" . . . "slimy" . . . "dishonest" . . . "scumbag") about a Vanity Fair reporter, while he greeted voters in public as he campaigned for his wife in June 2008. BUT Clinton obviously did not know Fowler was a HuffPost "citizen journalist." Should she have ID'd herself? (She clearly got a more honest take from Clinton than if he'd known she was a journalist.)

Shouldn't public figures know nowadays that anything said in public -- especially rants (or racism) -- will be recorded and available forever? Exhibits A and B.

Mayhill Fowler's earlier reporting scoop that launched "Bittergate" uproar. The Bittergate of 2012 campaign: "47%-gate."

Mainstream TV News Can Have Standardized Content . . . AND FORMAT

A BBC correspondent lampoons and deconstructs the sameyness (and cliches) of  mainstream TV news reports.

NBC News Called the Virginia Governors Race a "Stark Choice"

The Daily Show on Comedy Central called it a non-choice and much worse.

Nikki Finke locked out of Deadline.com

Nikki Finke, a leading reporter on Hollywood, started the independent website Deadline.com in 2006, sold it to Jay Penske's Mail.com company for a reported $14 million in 2009 (while continuing as editor-in-chief, and has now just been kicked out of the outlet she founded and built.

Edward Snowden Mainstream Media Coverage

Column I wrote on how some in mainstream media reacted to Snowden and his revelations of widespread surveillance of Americans.

Blogger Took Ethical Action

Here's an example of a blogger acting professionally and ethically. Blogger Ken Krayeske, who famously questioned University of Connecticut's basketball coach about his huge taxpayer-paid salary -- announced in Oct. 2009 that he wouldn't be covering Hartford City Hall because his girlfriend had a job there. If he'd disclosed the relationship and kept covering City Hall, that  might have been sufficient from an ethical standpoint.