From this morning's Muck Rack Daily regarding the recent controversial TIME magazine cover:

“The ridiculous and sensationalist magazine covers selected by the editors...are little more than glossy representations of a disturbing trend away from quality ‘Fourth Estate’ reporting, toward attention-grabbing gutter journalism - focusing less on thoughtfully objective coverage, and more on controversial grandstanding. It's bad enough that the private individual is still caught up in the insecure desire to garner Twitter followers and Facebook fans, regardless the source or durability of said acquisitions. Now that journalists (some accredited, others self-anointed) are fighting for the same short-term attention, instead of working toward long-term acknowledgment, our entropic descent toward societal idiocy is all but assured. When you suck at a bitter teat, the milk is guaranteed to curdle in your stomach.” - Nicholas De Wolff, freelance writer

Oh really? I don't disagree with the knock against the cheap sensationalism on display on that cover, but what exactly is wrong with a journalist accruing Twitter followers, Facebook fans, etc?

Do some people do it solely to boost their egos? Yes. Do some also do it to spread an important message, educate others, etc? Yes and yes. At its best, this is actually what reporters do. And this being the 21st century, they know that their audiences might not be seeking them out. So they have to seek out their audiences. And while social media can definitely be a place for attention whores and sycophants, let's not conflate the medium with its users. We use the technology, it does not use us.

If anyone is keeping track, the first TribLocal edition put out exclusively by Journatic is the Homewood/Flossmoor one. What's Journatic you ask? Here you go.

If you click on any story on the Homewood/Flossmoor site, you'll see that each byline has a name followed by "South Suburban News Service." Presumbaly in a northern suburb, it will read "North Suburban News Service," etc. In any event, this is how you can distinguish a Journatic byline from that of a Tribune staffer. 

Other differences I'm noting between this and my suburb's edition (for the town of Northbrook), still run by Tribune:

• My edition still offers the option (up top) to sign in and create an account. This is presumably a holdover from the days TribLocal was using a lot of community content i.e. content not entered by Trib staffers. Also one needed an account in order to post a comment on a story. The Homewood/Flossmoor stories don't appear to have commenting enabled. Will this stay that way forever? Will comments no longer be welcome on any TribLocal site since there will be no one to moderate them? Stay tuned.

• Peculiarly, Flossmoor includes a Contact Us link at the top while Northbrook does not. Northbrook has the info elsewhere though and it sends you to the same place that Flossmoor does: a page that looks like this. Some of the people listed here are among the staffers laid off by Tribune as a result of the Journatic deal. However, they haven't departed yet and are still at their posts as far as I know.

• My edition still offers a link to sign up for a daily email newsletter. Flossmoor does not. Will there no longer be email newsletters? Again, stay tuned.

• My edition lists many more top level categories than Flossmoor; nine in all. Flossmoor only has six: News, Crime, Sports, Real Estate, Education and Athlete Tracker (an impressive-looking database of all active college athelets who hail from Homewood-Flossmoor). Conspicuously missing is the Government category. Will it and other categories be reinstated as soon as Journatic can get that coverage up and running? Time will tell.

• The URL structure is different for the Journatic-run page. It's http://hf.triblocal.com whereas my Northbrook page is  http://triblocal.com/northbrook/

• Homewood-Flossmoor has several things my edition lacks. On the right rail there is a police blotter, campaign contributions, the athelete tracker and, ala EveryBlock, new business licenses. These are clearly Journatic innovations as this stuff comes from raw data that is publicly available through various government bodies. The campaign contributions links are potentially quite useful though I'm not sure regular citizens would take the time to wade through them, much less come to any conclusions based on them. A typical item reads like this:

On March 27, William Davis For State Representative made a $600.00 transfer to Miller for Senate.

According to the Illinois State Board of Elections, William Davis for State Representative's address is P.O. Box 704, Homewood, Ill.

Miller for Senate is a PAC created on December 20, 2011. Its stated purpose is "to Support the election of Donna Miller." The address listed is 20340 Joy Drive, Lynwood, Ill. 60411.

Donna. Miller, of 20340 Joy Lane, Lynwood, Ill. 60411, is chairperson of the organization. Donna. Miller, of 20340 Joy Lane, Lynwood, Ill. 60411, is treasurer.

As you might imagine, I have a lot to say about all this and I have quite a few questions, but it's still very early. I'm going to keep an eye on all this and see how things progress. The next suburbs to be turned over to Journatic are Geneva/Elgin, Hinsdale,Crystal Lake and Bolingbrook.

If you or anyone you know lives in Homewood/Flossmoor and can give me a read on how authentically local this page feels, please let me know by leaving a comment or emailing me at tooter2 (at) gmail (dot) com.

UPDATE 5-5-12 I am told that Journatic will eventually be doing government stories.

From a recent Chicagoist interview with the founder of online-only Rebellious Magazine:

Big media outlets that churn out stories on quick deadlines and have to appeal to broad audiences tend to fall back on certain ways of telling stories that I was never comfortable with. There’s one narrative that’s told about poor people, people of color, immigrants, the incarcerated, members of the GLBT community, single moms, people with disabilities—anyone who isn’t a white, married, middle-class reader of a certain age.

YEP.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm always going on and on... and on about how much I hate TV news of almost any kind, whether it be network or cable. If you currently watch news on TV, I think you should stop. Don't get me wrong. I love TV. But I think TV is for entertainment, not for news.**

In my estimation, it's a dumbed down version of what's happening, there is often very little actual news and nothing unique is offered that you can't already get in a newspaper or somewhere online. 

**There are a few exceptions to this of course, but let's not get into all that now.

However, I've had a baby. When you're alone in the house with an infant all day, hearing another adult voice, even if it's the voice of a TV anchor, can be a welcome distraction. So I briefly turned on FOX Chicago this morning while feeding Benji and was surprised at what I saw so I tweeted about it: 

An actual segment on @foxchicago this morning: "Hot off the Presses." They read from the paper and some websites. #TVnewsfail

...They read from a physical paper and the cameraman zoomed in on some of the graphics. And then a static image of some site. #TVnewsfail

...way to add value @foxchicago! I mean, thank god I have you in case I was too busy to read the paper or go online #TVnewsfail #idiotbox 

At this point, someone at FOX tweeted me back:

@annatarkov Hi Anna, thanks for sharing your opinion. Now that we know what you don't like, is there anything you do like about #FOXGDC?

— Good Day Chicago (@GoodDayChicago) April 17, 2012

I asked if they were sincere in wanting ideas and they said they were. So guys, let's give them some.

Leave a comment below about how their show could be improved or how TV news in general could be made better, more useful and more relevant. 

Or if you prefer, tweet about it with the hashtag #TVnewsNeedsHelp. Thanks!

How urgent is the need for innovation? Eight years ago urgent.

Here it is verbatim. I will be addressing it as well as many other things as part of my forthcoming post about the CNC situation. Stay tuned.

February 20, 2012

To our readers:

As you might have heard or read by now, the Chicago News Cooperative is suspending its contributions to the Midwest pages of the New York Times and its website effective February 26 so we can reassess our operations and determine if there is a more sustainable path to the future.

Effective next Sunday, the Times pages produced by the CNC will no longer appear in the Friday and Sunday editions of the newspaper and its website. Obviously I’ve taken this step with much pride and regret – pride in the excellent journalism produced by the CNC staff over the past two and one-half years and regret that I could not raise the resources we needed to continue our current level of operations. As the CNC’s editor and CEO, I take full responsibility for this situation.

Unlike similar start-up efforts like the Texas Tribune in Austin, the Bay Citizen in San Francisco and ProPublica in New York, we never recruited the kind of seven figure donations from people of means concerned about the declining quality of news coverage around the country. As a result, CNC never raised the resources to make investments in the business side of our operation that would have generated the revenue we needed to achieve our original goal – a self-sustaining news operation within 5 years.

CNC always has been an experiment in trying to figure out a way to finance accountability journalism, the kind of reporting that many news organizations are abandoning as they struggle with a deteriorating business model and financial problems. This is a very difficult problem especially in major cities and carries ominous implications for a democracy.  An organization dedicated to public service journalism is an indispensible civic asset, and we remain committed to finding some possible answers.

In the coming days and weeks, we will be examining our potential to see if we can identify an alternative path and preserve some of the journalistic assets we have developed. Continued support is welcome and would help us figure out the best path for CNC.
 
The decision to suspend operations was motivated by some complex factors and unresolved questions regarding our tax status and a change in circumstances that triggered questions about the economic wisdom of commitments between the CNC and the New York Times. Frankly, the situation is too complex to discuss in any detail in a note like this. Unfortunately, reports riddled with errors still get wide circulation on the Internet, and the reporting on our problems was no exception.

Early stories and Twitter posts on our problems were inaccurate.  The reporting was sloppy and simply reinforced in my mind the need for solidly reported, well-edited journalism, the kind that professional CNC journalists have been doing on our website and in the New York Times since November, 2009.  I can assure you that most of the people involved worked incredibly hard and in good faith to come up with some solutions to the cash shortage that threatens our future

I promise to keep you posted on our plans as we wrestle with these issues in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, I would like to deeply thank all of you who have supported us over the past two and one-half years, particularly the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, our largest donor; The New York Times, our second largest supporter; the CNC board, especially its chairman, John Canning; everyone who has donated individually both large and small and the staff of the CNC, whose work is simply heroic.

Thanks and regards,

James O’Shea
Editor and CEO
Chicago News Cooperative.