AP: How Things Have Changed

JNS – could you give us a URL maybe? your link directs us to the login page, which I don’t think should be necessary.
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Oh, and congrats on having a piece in the Post.

Awesome story JNS. Great quote at the end of the story about need an equator. When I used to “rip and read” back in the 70s and 80s, UPI(RIP) and AP stories were drier the my late mother’s Thanksgiving stuffing.

The lack of skepticism and objectivity by the 21st generally makes my blood boil. This was a great glimpse behind the scenes and I know have a better view of what’s going on. Great writing on really interesting story.

I do wax nostalgically for mid to late 20th Century journalism. You professors at Columbia would be proud of you for this story JNS.

Kathy, thanks– the link works for me. Anyone else having problems?
JNS

Good article JNS.
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This quote expressed the way I feel about it.
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“I worry that their strategy is too 2004 Web and not a 2008 approach to the Web,” says Dick Keil, a former AP reporter who spent 20 years working for wire services before becoming a political consultant. “It’s like New Coke — it seems cool now, but just wait. It could bring down the whole company: They have a recognized, respected and trusted brand and identity, and they are moving in a radically new direction likely to make the vast majority of their subscribers uncomfortable.”
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I no longer trust things from the AP and I suspect that they will lose their business if the papers revolt as you describe toward the end.
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I am such a confirmed newspaper reader that even if I’m too busy to get to it during the day it arrives, I read each paper until I’m current. Wednesday a friend and I lamented how much is being lost bit by bit from our only daily paper. Where papers seem to me to be making a mistake is by cutting things they do well. The mention of missing the Renoir exhibit because you hadn’t signed up for RSS feeds for Renoir is a great example. Even something dumb like a preview with projected winner of each Sunday’s NFL game has disappeared since last season. I now have to go online to find that.

It’s working. AP is heading in a troubling direction, to say the least. Good job and congrats.

I didn’t have a problem with the link in the post.

ok, I’ll log in to Wapo.

BTW, I see they are up to Feb 2007 in bringing archives over. Scroll below Ooops and there they are. Including long arabic spam in comments!

JNS

Are you just trying to be contrarian with the b/w photo? Or did the great swampland crash of 08 somehow affect your regular headshot?

Jay – exceptionally fine article. Your writing has, it seems to me, grown a good deal over the last few months – hope you don’t mind my saying so.

The headline about Obama’s pick of Biden showing a lack of self-confidence really demonstrates the wrong-headedness of their approach, doesn’t it. Obama’s pick of Biden now seems the embodiment of sure-footedness compared to the pick of Palin? (wrong-headedness? sure footedness? Where’d I get all these body parts)

Interesting. I just posted in another thread about AP’s investigation into the Palin administration’s handling of the bidding process on the pipeline…..perhaps more aggressive journalism than previously? Wasn’t aware of that.

ivb – how’re you feeling about the possibility of the trolls being moderated out/abandoning the blog? I won’t miss them, if that happens. We’ve had some fine conversations from time to time, which never seems possible when we’re being trolled. I also wouldn’t miss mile-long posts in an untranslated language.

” “My e-mail inbox has been, over the course of this campaign, filled with angry organized e-mails from people on the left ”

Everyone agrees they stink so it must be “organized” that way you can dismiss it.
Why they would take Mercedes and turn it into Yugo is something I’ll never understand.
Very nice job JNS.

I think that one of the problems is that people themselves. If they had half a mind they would realize that when the journalism is detached from reality, then you have a problem.
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1….When it is based on speculative “issues” (Ayres “connection”)
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2….When journalism has “taboo” subjects (Being specific about the use of hatred as a poltical tool)
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3….When journalism fails to distinbuish between propaganda and real news (FOX)
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4….When journalists attempt to put a mask of “impartiality” on (False equivalencies)
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It is hard to find out what the truth is when there is no one that will hold the standard up high enough to see – and that’s bad for the whole country!
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The best cases in point:
The “grading” done by pundits after debates. Almost always, their “grading” differs widely from the general population.
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It seems that the only possible way to get at the truth these days is to wait for the controlling politics to ebb and let the historians evalute it from the impersonal distance of time…

I think my new standard for “analysis” is Campbell Brown’s assertion that reporters ought to be able to say it’s cloudy outside without having to say “some people say it’s sunny.” But there will still be people who complain that you didn’t say it’s sunny. So the fact that writers are getting complaints from both sides doesn’t really mean they got the balance right.

Absolutely amazing nuisance. Had a comment put into moderation, and I can’t imagine why.

Mudflats has this moderation problem on WordPress too. People keep trying to repost the same comment, and once the duplicate comments get thrown out it only makes the filter think that person must be a troll and throws out their next comments. So I don’t necessarily think this is going to be easily fixed. This is mudflat advice about what puts you in spam:
* If you put multiple links in your post, you may be considered spam.
* If you put a link and nothing else, you may be considered spam.
* If you drop the F-bomb, you will definitely be considered spam.
* If you have been spammed before, you will more likely be considered spam.

David Frum is basically calling for McCain to concede

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/23/AR2008102302081.html?nav=hcmoduletmv

It’s definitely annoying, Kathy. But I’ll be glad if we don’t have to scroll past the Arabic and Turkish spam anymore. So have you decided your plans for election day? Partay or working at the polls?

SG — does this mean that Frum is of the delusional mindset that believes the GOP doesn’t deserve to be taken down. I would think the so-called conservative intellectual elite would recognize that they need a time out, if for nothing else to get the hardcore nuttery back behind closed doors.

If anybody thought the Politico story was just another hit piece on Sarah Palin, CNN would beg to differ. Again note what I said in KT’s thread. Schmitt does not actually issue a denial. They say that everyone is working towards victory. But neither the CNN story nor thePolitico story put forth the meme that someone is trying to lose. The press released was designed to fight a straw man. Its really telling that the press release does not say that every one is on board with the same strategy nor does it dispute the allegations that there are high tensions with in the Palin camp.

Kathy, I definitely won’t miss the long posts in foreign languages. I did find that I could read the first sentence or so and know who was posting. Name at the top will make that easier. Jamesryan won’t have the patience to create his many lines with space in between, however.
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I put a comment in a post below (the McCain Palin one I think) describing the mailers I have received against Obama. I assume it was held because I quoted the word used about Ayers and some of that ilk.
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Indeed, very annoying. I looked at Mudflats earlier and realized I must not post on that thread again until I’m freed. Bet the Sheriffs really want to get that fixed!

I just had a comment put into moderation for no descernible reason. Is there a list of regualar words that I should avoid? Although that’s going to wreak havoc on my comedic capabilities.

Dee:
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Don’t quote directly sentiments voiced by Palin/McCain supporters.

Example:
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“End his life! End his life!”

Jay — Thanks for this article. It made me sad. I’m just a reader/researcher, but the distinction between the AP issued breaking news, basic facts vs. commentary and interpretation has always been clear to me. I do see “basic facts without commentary” as a public good, and wish it could continue that way. Also, the bits about pricing made me wonder how small-town newspapers would be impacted. My local newspaper already struggles to not become completely insular… the AP national and international news is all they’ve got. If that were to disappear because of increased costs that the local newspaper couldn’t afford, I don’t know how the newspaper would adapt to cover events and stories beyond the immediate area. Just thinking out loud…
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Good story.

sg thanks for pointing out the Frum piece. Two things amused me.
1) that he refers to republicans and conservatives. Seems everyone has given up pretending that republicans ARE conservative
B) That his doomsday scenario about the Democrats having one party rule is exactly what the country got with republicans in charge. Sweet, sweet projection.

For those interested. Real Clear is back but only has posts from 2006.

Frum is delusional for not recogonizing that the GOP needs a time out so they can put the fringe back in the closet. And no amount of misdirection (beware of the scary Democrats) is gong to change that.

dee I think it is pretty much a lock that the fringe is all that will be left of the GOP. They will be not in the closet but in charge.
If I’m right then 2010 will make 2008 look like 2002.

The kicker:

“The eight largest papers in Ohio have formed their own co-op and exchange stories with one another for free.”

Good. This trend will continue and flatten the information supply chain in a way that does not penalize the reader one bit. The AP was the vestigial tail of a Town Crier system of information dispersal. Good riddance.

The Fornier issue wasn’t just a matter of him being asked to take a job and rejecting it. It was conversations that lasted several months before he decided to take the AP job instead.

It just isn’t democrats he has attacked. He has attacked every opponent of John McCain. He went hard after Romney when Romney was the competitor. Then he switched to Hillary and Obama when they were McCain’s rivals.

Fornier holding this position is simply unacceptable in this campaign. We joke about Michael Scherer being in the tank, but Fornier literally is in McCain’s pocket.

2 Things:

1: Some have begun to explore opting out, and at least 16 have done so, including the Tribune Co. with its nine papers….

Having 9 papers and a high quality operation puts them is a position to be Able to opt out. Not everyone’s that fortunate.

2: Great article….

Good piece, Jay. Someone has to be the Joe Friday of the news world: “Just the facts, ma’am.”

I’ve always regarded AP at the national level as near gospel, but the Fournier performance has left me unable to take anything from AP at face value.

Ap coverage of yesterday’s appearances included this: “While [Palin] spoke, the crowd at her rally cried out about Obama: ‘He’s a socialist.’”

The New Yorker used to have an occasional feature that, applied to this “quote,” would read thus: “Cries We Doubt a Crowd Ever Cried.”

Here are some dumb parts to the article (not that I’m slagging you, JNS, on the contrary I am glad you brought these shifts to our attention):
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People, he predicted, will get their news online in nuggets that they pick and choose, ignoring the rest. You like Barack Obama? Here’s an RSS feed of everything being written about him — and nothing about John McCain to give it context. Like Picasso? Here’s everything we have on him, but you may miss the Renoir exhibit because you failed to sign up for Renoir alerts. For the AP, this future is potentially profitable because, with its new online partnerships, it can deliver tailored news directly to every reader’s, viewer’s and listener’s inbox.
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A pure mainline of Obama news doesn’t cut it. Any reader of news (hopefully) starts piecing together the fact that so very many things are interrelated.
The trick is to separate out the dross (ie anything written by Bill Kristol); I don’t need Fornier doing that for me.
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But in a world, and a Web, full of analysis, opinion and “accountability journalism,” what’s missing is a neutral referee.
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I would like to agree with that, but given how Scherer and Carney treat the notion of a neutral reference, I am willing to suffer with Greenwald’s biased posts for a while yet.

Ha! I knew that comment would draw down some moderation!

They’d best get this nonsense fixed, else folks will be moseying on.

Also:
sgwhiteinfla, the Frum article is pretty great. There’s a huge typo, though:
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I could pile up the poll numbers here, but frankly . . . it’s too depressing. You have to go back to the Watergate era to see numbers quite so horrible for the GOP.
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I think he meant to say, “I could pile up the poll numbers here but they are unbelievable awesome. It’s like all of our sins over the past half century are coming back to bite us in our fat, cottage cheesy rear ends!”

Hey, fantastic! That didn’t get moderated! I’m like 4 for 10 now!

Also:
Second, the political culture of the Democratic Party has changed over the past decade. There’s a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC’s evening line-up — and soon, it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington.
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I find it interesting that Frum (along with every other right-winger I’ve seen) does not acknowledge the reasons behind our anger. To them, it’s just us getting angry for no reason at all.

Good link, sgwhiteinfla, good link.

Bias comes in many thousands of shades other than “Fournier Red.” This is why removing the toll gate that is the AP is, in the long run, a good thing for the communication side of journalism. As for the business side of journalism, it is a necessity that the industry get pancake-flat ASAP or risk death.

Good article, JNS. I don’t know if I should be sad for the loss of AP qua AP, but it seems sad somehow.

The basic point that Fournier appears to be missing is newspapers want news – the analysis they can do for themselves under more forgiving deadlines.
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There’s also the fundamental falsehood underlying Fournier’s assumption that ‘analysis’ doesn’t have a bias. In the very act of moving from neutral-but-hopefully-well-informed observer, the journalist has to come down on one side or the other. Not that it’s impossible to do analysis without bias, but it requires particularly adroit journalists working with the luxury of a few days remove.
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There’s also the suspicion that if you ask your reporters in the field to take a position, they are liable to think what position their bosses would like them to take. No point writing copy that will never run. And it’s not exactly a state secret as to where Fournier’s allegiances lie.
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At the end of it all, the AP ends up doing precisely what they were formed not to do – present news with a slant.