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From Northeast Public Radio, this is the Media Project, a weekly discussion about issues
confronting the media. Oh, newspapers and meets such interesting people. They know the
lowdown now it can be told. I'll tell you right reliably off the record about some charming people
I have known. Or I meet politicians and grafters by the store, killers playing and fancy,
it's really quite a bar. Oh, meets Pegrim and meets such interesting people.
They wallow in corruption, crime and door, tingling, Ling City desk,
full press, full press, extra extra read all about it, it's a mess meets the test.
Oh, and loose Pegrim and meets such interesting people. It's wonderful, the rep grows at the press.
Media Project is underway. We have the opportunity for you to hear some commentary analysis and if
we're lucky, a little insight into the media issues of the week, Kymrex, method editor of the
Times Union here with Rosemary Armeo from the University of Albany. Hello. Yeah. I'm
investigating journalist now here in her back in her hometown. How about that? And Dr. Alan
Chartac, the CEO of Northeast Public Radio, columnist, commentator, political scientist, etc., etc.
I wanted to ask you something, Rex. Did you? Do you think newspapers are better than radio?
Yeah. You think newspapers?
Basically, I feel pretty self-righteous. And they're off.
Can you doubt it? Yeah, absolutely. No, no, I think actually, you know, there's no real journalism
done on radio except on public radio these days. Very little done in the commercial side.
But there is some really fine journalism being done on the radio through the publicly supported
radio stations. Listen, folks, every time you say something nice, it means you're going to get
clobbered. Go ahead, finish the sentence. Well, most of the original reporting, of course, as we've
discussed, comes from print. There was a study done in Baltimore two years ago that found that
two-thirds of all of the enterprise reporting in the city, when you look at all of the media across
various purposes, came from the Baltimore Sun, of which Rosemary is an alum as a matter of fact.
And I think that's typical, I would say that, in fact, I'd say the percentage is higher in the
capital region, the percentage of enterprise reporting that is stuff that's not just mimicking
press releases, comes from the print side. And the wonderful reporting that is done, for example,
MPR's investigative unit, national investigative unit is just top notch, but Margot Williams,
its director, our Sullivan, its star, our own newspaper trained. They have jobs in radio,
because there are no jobs in newspapers anymore. Right. Yeah. Well, I do think Rex has a point,
and I think it's all going to change now. We are going to the point where, as we all know,
newspapers are having a very rough time of it. You don't have the same number of employees.
They don't have the same resources they did, but I think the tradition has always been that
the newspapers break it and that the electronic media goes with it. They try it. And I believe,
of course, that the legacy enterprises that published newspapers are going to survive in some form.
I think that we will have, I mean, that's why we're investing in a new press here in Albany.
They keep talking, but we may be different, well, because we're doing that alongside all of the
digital stuff we're doing. There are huge challenges, you know, right now, the biggest challenge
that we're confronting is that mobile is taking off. 80% of Americans now have smartphones.
Isn't that interesting? I work in college class, I'm no news, and that is no news to us there.
We see it. Are we going to be able to deliver it on those smartphones without some sort of a good
revenue stream? We had Dr. Shodak's turning off his. I am. But I wanted to ask you,
since we've all agreed, you know, most of the supporting, you know, originally comes from
the written press, but from a personal perspective, do you think that makes you better than me?
Yeah. So I thought so. No, no, of course not. It's not about competition,
Alan. It's all about trying to seek the truth and report it fully.
And get the basin. Right. I wanted to ask you, Rex, about this article on a study done by the
Pew Foundation, of course, they do all these studies. Looking at four newspaper organizations that
have come up with new revenue doing well. And I read it, looking for hope. And they're really kind
of, I'm sorry, they're really small newspapers and their business ventures seem so weak and
uninteresting. It's not news. Does that, does that depress you to read this?
Yes, somewhat. Yes, because you know, they're talking about ads sales reorganization at a little
paper in the Naples, Florida, digital marketing agency homegrown in the press Democrat in
Santa Rosa, California. We do that. You know, we are finding that our fastest growing revenue stream
actually is digital marketing. It is search engine optimization and search engine marketing,
which are sales team sales. I mean, I barely understand this stuff, but it is where our sales
force is able to bring an additional revenue. And so that's fine. Whatever revenue it is, they're
going to do to support our journalism. I'm happy for that. But don't you think that part of
any enterprise, whether it's radio or television or newspapers is leadership, that if you get a
talented leader who's charismatic, you know, who knows what they're doing and who really goes into
a community and you know, sets down roots, that that can be the difference.
Partly. But I do think that even however great an editor or publisher may be a general manager
of a TV station, you know, there are just certain demographic trends that you can't argue with.
And part of it too is the significant loss. I think that it goes to this question of the loss of
confidence in our public institutions in general. People don't care about government as much as they
use to. Therefore, why would they pay attention to the media that covers the public institutions?
People are just basically washing their hands of everything and becoming more ignorant. And
that is just hard for us to deal with because we kind of depend upon an educated populist.
Well, you know, we have this program called box pop and we can always tell based on what we're
going to do, how many calls we're going to get. So if it's on yesterday's state of the state,
by governor Andrew Cuomo, I mean, in terms of, you know, you got a really fight to keep those
lights on. Whereas if you go on and say, what about them meds? You know, it comes all over.
It was ever saw, even when newspapers weren't a hated, that sportswear driver. That's not the
problem. I mean, I want to switch though. I think Rex is right. But Alan, your point is also valid.
I would love to see a newspaper go down and flames because they were bold and took strong stands
and tried new things that no one ever did before. And as newspapers have been into client,
we've been in the middle of it. They've gotten more and more carefully conservative. They don't
offend anyone. They're boring. And they're losing readers just because they're being careful.
You know, who went out in the blaze for member PM? This is a, you know, Alan's era in New York City.
They all, uh, the Ralph Hingersaw newspaper in New York City that was exactly that. It was bold
and same thing. The New York, the New York Post was dying under Dorothy Schiff when it was a
liberal paper until it was picked up by Rupert Murdoch, turned conservative. And now it is still
losing money, isn't it? Pond of money. But it's, uh, it's surviving as an arm, an important arm,
I think of this. The two needs to do a study on them rather than the ones who do digital management
and reorganization. Yeah. It's kind of hard. I still like to think of news as a business
different from the rest. Do I like to? It's not like giving me a job, but what a lovely concept that
well, it's so, so much, it's so interesting for you Rosemary to be a professor, uh,
teaching this stuff as opposed to a practitioner. You still keep your hand in, of course, but,
but as a practitioner, your primary responsibility is an educator. So how do you educate about
something that is going down? Yeah, I think about this all the time. I mean, you, the trick is you
have to find, um, Rex, you talk about this all the time. You have to find the values of the legacy
press award I hate because it makes us sound even older than we are. But the values of the legacy
press and how you move those forward. So what do you have to still know that we know from the old days
to put news on a mobile phone, you know, the ethics, the same. What's a story? My students, you know,
you have to teach them what a story is, how you find it, how you prove it. If you think something is
true, that's a whole lot different than writing and showing that it's true. Should we stay with the
mobile thing for just a second since everybody gets their news on their mobile phone or a lot of
people will they give information? They're not necessarily getting news. They're not that's the
problem. People are turning to it for information and the trends trend line suggests that people
are going to spend an increasing share of hours that the amount of time people spend on their
mobile devices will grow by 10 fold between 2012 and 2016. Yeah, but what are the what are the
conditions of that? Yeah. So I, for example, have my New York Times app and I go on again and again
and again during the day. I just keep checking it and they keep changing it. So from that perspective,
that's where the action is. And that is one of the important things that Rosemary needs to be
teaching is how to think quickly, absorb quickly. That's one of the old skills of journalism
or right quickly. This is the same as the wire service deals that I started and you update all the
time you have to beat the AP. So you're going to come out with a new development. What's new today
is that people don't just want to read what the New York Times has to say. They want to comment to
each other and among themselves about it. The inner activity is really new. Well, the New York Times
allows them to do that. Exactly. Yeah. And Facebook does and Twitter does a whole lot of different
media do and the students, you know, they love a colleague at you all, but I have to tell you
about this to know wonderful experiment, Laney Salisbury, in a beginning journalism class. You
made the students go 48 hours with no media. They were allowed to read newspapers, but they couldn't
watch TV, do Twitter, Facebook. They were allowed to turn on their cell phones if they had to make
a call and then turn it right off. And then they had to write about it. I'm sorry. Right about
going. Being without media less. And she describes the papers as rather desperate and in the language
of addiction and with the draw, you know, some students said, well, I just didn't know what to do
with myself. So I went to the gym. I feel so much healthier. I'm going to change my life. And
others said, how could you do this? And they broke, you know, after like 20 hours, they couldn't do
it anymore. And they had to turn on a phone. Absolutely. Media crack. Media crack. This is good. We
want them to be addicted to information. This is great. But yeah, the trick is, okay, you grew up,
my students, you grew up in this. You're part of it. How do we channel that for news?
And what kind of news? So what do I mean? You know, always the betting is now. There was a big
issue about the New York Times this week. Wasn't there having to do with the paywall.
Yeah, right. Because they made the paywall less permeable waiting before you do that. They'll
take a drink of water. My favorite media story of the week poor poor Mark Ruby. I feel for him.
You know, I have sons. I could feel that young man's just I didn't really like his message. I
got to say, I thought Obama did great. And then this young man comes in who is going to give the
answer. He's on the cover of Time magazine is the savior of the Republican party. And he's
done in by sweat and thirst. It's so sad. They're explaining to everybody because they may not know.
Giving the response to the state of the Union address for Senator Marco Rubio had a Nixon
moment where he was dripping sweat. And he did sort of an awkward lean, slightly off camera while
keeping his eye on the camera to grab a bottle of water and take a swig. And that's all that
anybody's talking about. The media issue of this is why does this become such a big deal?
I know. I'm fasting. And I keep thinking, you know, we all have done a fair amount of public
speaking. And you know that if you have the audience right in front of you, if you can't read
something because your glasses fall down in the end, do you know, so you needed a drink,
you kind of just say, Oh, excuse me. I'm sorry, I'm getting old and people laugh and you go on,
but on TV, you just don't have that opportunity at all. So it is like Nixon who was done in by
beard by a growth of his honest face. You remember the title of Dan Rather's first memoir is
The Camera Never Blinks. And that is actually true. You know, people are kind of, and people expect
perfection. This is why when people are talking about television newscasters, they focus on the hair
on the anchor woman, you know, it's stupid, but the fact is, but it also is really well known.
Rubio was really done in by his prep people who could have as some commentators that just put
a big old glass of water on a desk in front of him. If he had reached down and taken a sip of that,
it would have been, you know, would have been sure. This is the bright light of the Republican party.
Ah, yeah. Look, they got slaughtered among Hispanic voters. They thought if this guy,
although we're going to give the Hispanic guy from Florida, the senator, the chance to do well.
And they put him up there right after the president and the president, as you say, Rosemary was
better than ever before. And when he yelled, they deserve a vote.
Yeah, that was great. And the people was screaming. Now this guy comes. And frankly, he sounds a
little bit like a junior high school kid reading a paper. You know, quite shaky. Sounds very
young. He doesn't sound like he has a lot of gravitas. And I got an email from a regular
correspondent who said, is this the best they've got? Yeah, Bobby Jindel, you remember did the same
thing last year and also a bright light in the Republican party and he got a shot and came off
very stiff and scared and just kind of, you know, dumb sounding. But logically, they thought,
logically, I think the Republicans thought they could fool the American people. I mean,
here comes this guy and he says, well, we have to do better on this and this. But it still sounds
very restrictive. I think the Republicans have a really hard task right now because they have been
very anti-immigration. They've seen the demographics and realized they have to change. And they
just aren't all the way there. And Rubio actually was pretty logical. He is an immigrant himself.
Sure. His mother has told him, don't hurt the immigrants. But you know, we're talking about the
difference between print and digital or electronic. Of course, this comes off much better in print
because you're not looking at that kind of thing. And this is why television is either you could say,
it's either the great equalizer or you could say that it values show business and the props of
things. How can you compete against the power of the state of the Union address with the
Congress standing in the pump of the presidency and everything? And then suddenly, here's a guy
in a little room all by himself. With no water. But if you look at the words themselves, I'm sure
that Rubio came up better. As a Fox before the speech has said that Rubio had a very strong speech.
We'll see how he delivers it. That was totally the story of the evening. Yeah. But of course,
as every political scientist and journalist, teacher knows, and I hope that you don't throw up when
I say this one more time, Nixon lost on the television and won on the radio or the all the polling
then people who I'd listen on the radio 31. But you know, that's like many years ago now. And
yes, what happened to all these political operatives who's supposed to know that we know and how
come they didn't and help their candidate? Yeah. That should Rosemary here exactly. So, but we were
about to talk about the Times paywall. Sorry, before we had to stop for a little drink of water here.
So if you're by the way, just joining us, it's the media project from northeast pelvic radio,
Alan Shartock, Rosemary Armeo and Rex Smith here, how do you do? So anyway, so the Times has
tightened its paywall. It used to be more permeable. Yeah. And they caught me. I've sent in my credit card
number. Yes. I'm now an official. How do you get? How do you get on to the New York Times thing? You
you have to either have a subscription, right? In which case you're allowed to be right? Or you have
to click on. They have an online purchasing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've had it all along because I know
you keep boasting about that. I always was kind of proud that I could get around the paywall. Now
they've tightened it. And the interesting thing is they did this intentionally. They knew that the
paywall could be... Yeah. And when it's sucker people... First, now they've decided that it is
popular enough, you know, as I mentioned last week, they've actually increased Sunday print circulation
because of the paywall. They're finding that people are buying their Sunday print product in
order to have basically all areas access so they can get behind the paywall. That's so interesting.
The shard talks. I don't buy the paper during the week because I have this thing. But we buy that
Sunday times. Well, I'm happy because many of the futurists who I think led us into this travel
war and that no paywalls will never work. We've given away the company. But they are, right?
I think yes. At least for some brands, you know, the New York Times is a certain brand. I don't
know if it'll work for every new... Well, that's right. So we have to really ask Rex. Would there
up to be because he's been our sort of canary in the coal mine here all along. And for a while,
in the very beginning, I thought he said, people are going to get this free and we have our down
about it. Yeah, do you give away free? How can you start charging? What do you think now?
Wait, I'm not done yet. And yet, I'm not done trying to embarrass him yet. And then, he's doing a
pre-buttal. And then we started hearing about the value of paywalls and, you know, in the rest,
some papers like, what is a digital first? Is that what they're calling that cooperation,
digital first? I think they're even they are beginning to look at this. But when I said,
the New York Times is doing so well this morning in the office before we came in here,
Rex got what could only be described as a tight little smile around his face, which could only be
said, I know something that you don't know. Well, now that part is true. But,
you know, newspapers did everybody embrace, not just newspapers, but every entity embraced free
access to information. Those who initially moved to put paywalls around their work found that
people were avoiding them and the New York Times itself found out five years ago when they
introduced whatever that was called when they put rain down and others behind the paywalls.
Special content. Yeah, behind that. And now it's just that the marketplace is matured and people
are beginning to recognize that you can pay for it. If you want access to something, you're
going to have to pay for it. The same thing happened in television. Initially, cable television took
quite a while to catch on. And now everybody pays for television while not everybody. A lot of
people do and are watching the cable channel quite often. That's all I look at. Absolutely.
You say today. So I think that's true. But what is going to be fundamental and it's going to
affect WAMC as well, of course, is are people going to continue to turn to you for content if they
can get it free elsewhere. So you have to generate unique content that people are going to be
willing to pay for or turn to. Right? And while some people turn to WAMC, if they can, when the time
comes when all American cars are equipped with the digital access to the web, they'll get their
NPR programs that way, right? And bypass you. Well, some will and some will need to depend on what
local content means. Right. Exactly. But that's not all. We're also seeing cars being developed
that are not only hooked up to the internet, but are going to drive themselves.
And when you get a car that will take, when you get a car that'll take you to Pittsburgh,
there is really no reason. Law to say that you can't be watching television in your car. Right.
And television. No, on your way from all that into the world. Why could I put it on the
test? I don't know why you're going to go to Pittsburgh where you walk up and down beneath the
clock every night. Just fine. Newspaper there. But you know, actually in this conference that I was at
the other day, where I was another conference, you know, it's the same one. I just learned a lot from it.
But the guy who is the expert on mobile technology, and threw up a slide showing design in the cars
of the future, where there are screens all over the place. And saying, you know, as people have to pay
less attention to the road, they are going to be paying more. And even in the back seats, of course,
they're going to be laptops for everybody. This is not good news for FM. No, no, probably not.
But probably not good news for driving on highways.
Well, if the R2G2 will drive the car for you, what do you care? Well, it's true. What can you do?
I want one of those. That's one of the great rec scenes. What can you do? What can you do?
Well, you know, we're trying. You know, we're, we really believe if you want to look at the contrast
and see how different, how nobody really knows what the right thing to do is just look at the
difference between Syracuse and Albany in Syracuse where advanced publications, which is a
family-owned company, just like Hurst, my company, has taken the Syracuse daily newspaper down to
three days a week, really, for home distribution. And they put out a little newsstand product,
a very minor product. But basically, they're saying print is a very limited channel for them.
We're doing the opposite, of course. You know, we're building this press. We believe that we're
going to print for a long time to come. I'll be at it in smaller newspapers. So we'll find out who's stupid.
We will see. Yeah, I think we will. That's an interesting notion. So
and I'm not going to be around long enough to, you know, to find out. What are you talking about?
You're a young man. Well, yes, I believe that's true, Alan. But I think it'll be a few years.
There are enough newspaper readers my age and slightly below and above to sustain print for
a number of years, but not, you know, 15 years. So why are you building that press? Because
there are those people who we do have an audience for it. We knew and we know that we can sustain it,
and our cost of production will drop. Oh, like with classical music, won't they die? And
won't they and the opera won't they go away? Well, at some point, but classical music has survived
for a few hundred years. And I think it's got some time to go yet. And there are plenty of people
who sustained it. Go to the symphony someday and see how much gray hair you see.
Well, I do go to the symphony. And there's a lot. I know. I wanted to be symphony this past week.
And I was surprised how many men were there. I was I was actually, you know, my mother even commented on
that. Well, you know, there are a lot of men there because they're wise make them go.
Yeah, a girl. How does a guy who's a PhD become such an anti intellectual? I don't understand
this. You don't like it. I'm just a classical music. And you know, I'm the guy who runs 24 radio
stations that play the entire metropolitan opera season on your. But to your frustration,
it seems very much rosemite. I hardly think that you're a great fan of it. No, I'm not. Well,
here's my case. But now as soon as I'll tell you when I'll really start to like the opera,
when when we get to the point where, you know, you now get these electronic computer things,
just like on the back of the seat in front of you, you get the English translation. That's great.
That's coming. And that will make a difference. That's not just coming. It is in places, right?
Not that I know. In opera houses. In opera houses. I'm talking about cars. I'm talking about no
on your radio. Oh, your radio. Yeah. And now, well, so that's good. So the same. I think a lot
opera is fabulous. It's like soap opera. And as soon as it make you make it accessible through
language like this, yes, it will find a new audience. It is finding. I think you're prejudiced.
By what? My talent. Oh, my God. What a terrible thing this thing. Have we, have we moved away
from media commentary? Well, it's all together. It's all of a piece. Anyway, oh no, we've run out of time.
Oh, no. This show should be an hour. Some guy called in during the fun drive and said,
this show should be 45 minutes. That's a nice variation. Absolutely. It's wonderful to have that.
So we didn't get around to talking about the fact that the president has been ignoring print
reporters while he's been bringing in these TV reporters. Smart. He's. Yeah. He knows.
Because you know, print reporters. Well, I guess that reporters are saying, got you, got you, got you,
you know, and they can they put their context in the story right next to the president's own word.
They added. They added to mention that. How annoying. How would you like it? Well, I'm on
favor of editing. The president I wouldn't talk to. I guess so. Well, and that thought so. We're going
to have to leave you when I become president. Also ignore the press too. All right. You could. You're
tall. See you folks.
This girl. That not bake a cake.
Now this better men are such interesting people. They used to work like hell just for romance.
But finally the movie is not with standing. They all got prior to patches on their pants.
They organized a union to get a living wage. They joined with other actors.
