Why Hamilton Nolan is wrong.

I love Hamilton Nolan's work. It's always incisive commentary on the media world, and more often than not, I find myself nodding along in agreement as I read one of his acute -- and accurate -- digs against mainstream media, whatever that means today.

Today, I rarely, but respectfully, disagree.

Nolan writes today that, simply, "Honorifics should be banned." You know, the "Mr." and "Mrs." and all those titles that are used most frequently in national newspapers of record, such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

He writes:

We're the first to stand up and say that the honorifics-using NYT and WSJ are much, much better newspapers than the plainspoken masses that don't use honorifics.

But they would be better newspapers if they stopped the honorifics, and with the other outdated tropes of journalism that do nothing but throw up an unnecessary wall of language between the reader and what the newspaper is trying to communicate.

Reporters know damn well that all of the little tricks they use to make their stories sound authoritative are exactly that—tricks, which make the news look pleasing to editors but which obscure from the reader exactly how much of reporting is guesswork and summation and inference.

While I agree with the sentiment here -- journalists often try to obfuscate thin reporting with time-honored traditions such as "sources say," and generally attempt to create an air of authority through the tone of their reports -- I disagree with the proposal.

The way I see it, honorifics are indeed used to separate the publication from the readership to create an air of authority. But for those publications that still use them, that "air" -- call it "style" or "tone" or whatever you like -- is essential to the publication's brand.

The brand, of course, trumps everything.

You see, the use of honorifics by local daily tabloid newspapers would indeed be an awkward juxtaposition.

Imagine the following beneath a New York Post headline that read, "AMERICA'S NEXT TOP SEX PERV":

Mr. Jon, a recent guest designer on the reality show "America's Next Top Model," is already serving 59 years to life in prison in California for assaults on seven victims.

A bit passive-aggressive, no?

But the Times and Journal and other similar publications position themselves as papers of record. The official and final say on world events. The kind of proof-read, deliberate document you place into a time capsule -- even though these publications must co-exist and compete with more ephemeral online publications for eyeballs on a day-to-day basis.

My point here is that honorifics in these publications are used to convey the overall publication's tone. They are among an array of tools not to keep a reader at arm's length for the sake of it but to offer a sense of authority consistent with the publication's brand. This is why these publications exist -- for the long-term play.

This is also why Gawker, Nolan's publication, does not use them. Gawker isn't the official on stage -- it's the loud-spoken audience member throwing tomatoes. As with any publication with that kind of tone, using honorifics would create dissonance on the page (well, screen) -- and in this case, would be taken with a dash of sarcasm.

My take? I don't care whether a publication uses honorifics so long as usage is consistent -- even in the sports pages.

So when Nolan says it would be silly to use honorifics in the following sentence -- "Mr. Griffin then dunked on Mr. Mozgov, balls dangling harshly on Mr. Mozgov's chin" -- I'd agree.

But I'd also say the Journal or Times should never print a sentence like that in the first place. It's a conflict of style.

(By the way, the actual Journal wording about this event: "Then, of course, came the dunk—when Clippers rookie Blake Griffin took to the air in Los Angeles with Mr. Mozgov standing near the basket and slammed the ball as if he wasn't there." Sounds about right to me.)

The rise, and fall, of (new) media (jobs)

From David Carr's endlessly quotable Media Equation column in last week's New York Times, "The Fall and Rise of Media":

Young men and women are still coming here to remake the world, they just won’t be stopping by the human resources department of Condé Nast to begin their ascent.

For every kid that I bump into who is wandering the media industry looking for an entrance that closed some time ago, I come across another who is a bundle of ideas, energy and technological mastery. The next wave is not just knocking on doors, but seeking to knock them down.

Somewhere down in the Flatiron, out in Brooklyn, over in Queens or up in Harlem, cabals of bright young things are watching all the disruption with more than an academic interest. Their tiny netbooks and iPhones, which serve as portals to the cloud, contain more informational firepower than entire newsrooms possessed just two decades ago. And they are ginning content from their audiences in the form of social media or finding ways of making ambient information more useful. They are jaded in the way youth requires, but have the confidence that is a gift of their age as well.

For them, New York is not an island sinking, but one that is rising on a fresh, ferocious wave.

I was a part of that group that stopped by Condé Nast (and Hearst, and Time Inc., and HFMUS, and Rodale, and Meredith, and even NYT) HR on my way to becoming an editor.

The difference, in my opinion: I didn't wait for them -- even though I wanted to.

Reflections on Reflections of a Newsosaur

There's a great little piece by Priya Kumar in the latest American Journalism Review about the author of the popular journalism blog Reflections of a Newsosaur, Alan Mutter.

There was one "turning point" moment for Mutter in the story that struck me as curious. It goes like this:

The San Francisco Chronicle then hired Mutter to infuse the competitive spirit into a sleepy newsroom that some compared to a cruise ship. Mutter emphasized local news and investigative work.

The staff was talented and capable, Mutter says, but their chops had been dulled. He recalls asking one reporter to turn in a story by 5 that afternoon. Taken aback, the reporter said he had never reported and written a story in the same day.

"Well, today you will," Mutter replied.

Judging by the narrative, that was in the late 1980s. Reading this, though, I thought to myself: I don't know a single young journalist right now that can't turn in a story in a day.

In fact, perhaps even more than one story in a day.

Want to be taken aback in a post-blog world? Assign a story and ask a reporter to turn it in in a month -- or two, or three.

Now that's shocking.

(I strongly recommend regularly reading Alan's blog. He is, in many ways, the Seth Godin of the journalism world.)

How Much Do Bloggers Get Paid?

Take note, citizen journalists and mainstream media alike: bloggers get paid about $25 per post.

Or, in other words, at three posts per day, roughly $1,500 per month freelancing, according to an interesting article by ReadWriteWeb. And that's not including in-house or full-time bloggers:

Our respondents reported annual pay rates ranging from $45k and $55k with benefits (!) up to $70k, $80k and $90k with bonuses. We're tempted to say, based on the anonymously submitted but descriptive replies we got, that the closer to pure journalism our respondents were doing the lower their wages were.

What do you think? Is it enough, at 50-60 hours a week? Does this surprise you?

Will Google Rule The News Industry? (Yes, But Not The Way You Think It Will)

I recently read a great interview with Google's David Eun over at I Want Media and I thought I'd weigh in on this issue:

Is Google a threat to newspapers?

To which I answer: Yes, but not in the way that you think.

I recently visited Google's New York City headquarters, and I learned a lot about their way of thinking of their role in society. In presentations, employees/reps echoed the public sentiments that they are not interested in originating content, which is what news organizations are worried about, anyway (and proud to assert their place!).

It's my understanding that Google is interested in getting information/content to as many people as possible (which they were quite fervent about at the presentation), no matter what language it's in. That said, it seems all the calls for Google to "back off" news organizations' turf might be misdirected -- it seems they don't want to steal newspapers' thunder to report, but to disseminate what they've reported.

The real worry, I think, is that Google will become the first-stop for information -- even if it's not theirs. It's like a digital monopoly: Google's not stealing newspaper web traffic; it's just redirecting it so it makes money off of it before it gets where it's supposed to go. In that sense, it may be a win-win: this new path increases traffic to newspaper web sites, but also allows Google to make considerable money off the redirection. And all that web expansion that Google is doing just reinforces its stance on top of the Internet mountain, one strong enough that it can't be easily booted off.

Bottom line? News organizations should reevaluate what the working business model is, rather than the one they want it to be. Maybe we shouldn't worry where Google is in the beginning of the publication pipeline, but that it's becoming such a large part of it in the first place.

Aren't we all citizen journalists, by default?

Today's food for thought:

Who do journalists work for? Themselves, their employers, their readers, their country, their mothers?

Many journalists instinctually say the readers or listeners -- the citizens. But we're citizens, too.

So why do mainstream media, big-J journalists section themselves off -- i.e. "we're the journalists, they're the readers and listeners?" when we're all "citizens"?

Doesn't that make us citizen journalists, too, by definition?

Something to think about next time you hear someone talk about a "citizen journalist" as a separate entity.