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From Northeast Public Radio, this is the Media Project, a weekly discussion about issues
confronting the media.
I'll tell you, Christ, reliably off the record, about some charming people I have known.
Before I meet politicians and grafters by the score, killers play and fancy,
it's really quite a bore, oh, and these Superman meets such interesting people.
They wallow in corruption, crime and gore, tingling, winged city desk,
full press, full press, extra, extra read all about it, it's a mess meets the test,
only Superman meets such interesting people. It's wonderful, the rep result of press.
So the Media Project is underway and we're going to give you a half hour of commentary analysis,
and if you're lucky a little bit of insight into the media issues of the week, howdy folks.
I'm going to give it to you whether you like it or not.
Whether you like it or not, right? Lean right into the microphone there, Dr. Shartak,
we don't want to miss any of your new content. Oh no, no, no, no, no, that's not what you're saying.
That's Alan Shartak, the CEO of Northeast Public Radio. Get a coach him on radio stuff.
Oh, yeah, Dr. Elvis, thank you.
Thank you now. Rosemary Armeo, Professor of Journalism and Investigative Reporter
from the University of Albany, and I'm Rex Smith, editor of the Times Union in Albany, New York,
from where this program originates for those of you in Southern Indiana, Central Texas,
Ohio, wherever it is that we need to know the big town. The big places where this is popular.
The dance, the dance, the dance. Speaking of popular, popular science is our leading story
this week. You wouldn't think that a media program would ordinarily be looking at popular science,
but what popular science has done is this popular science has had comments on their stories.
You know, we most of us have comments on the digital versions of stories that we run or on blogs.
Popular science has turned off comments. Their situation is a little bit unusual, I would say,
because it's a science magazine, right? And so what they're looking for typically in what they publish
is if not peer reviewed, at least because popular science is not a peer reviewed magazine,
but it is at least scientifically justified and they're getting a lot of stuff it hasn't been.
Their comments has turned into politics. People are debating things like evolution or climate change,
which in the view of popular science is not debatable. It's scientific fact that's different than,
you know, whether you should ever have a Republican or a Democratic president. It's really fascinating
that they have turned it off. Well, in some cases, and I'm not saying in all cases, but in some cases,
the comments section, it seems to me, has been a golden opportunity for incubating in the nut fringe.
And where else are you going to be able to go and shoot off your mouth about something that is
absolutely ridiculous? Talk radio. You know, I mean, talk radio.
On the other hand, though, Ellen, there are some publications that have comments that are so
fascinating that you will see the articles publicized on Facebook saying be sure to read the comments.
New Yorker readers, that's like a whole different class. They extend and expand the articles that
they're attached to. I love them. New York Times, which by the way has comments only on some
stories because they have human moderators who go through everything to get out of the store.
I think that is the issue. They have a great, they have an absolutely great section too.
The problem is they can't put comments on every store because it's simply too expensive to monitor all of them.
Right. Well, yes. But to me, if you have an empire and they're being a situation in knocking out the
nuts, then I think, you know, you really have something that's worthwhile having. But I swear,
I have seen it in some publications. I'm not going to name them in which the same three guys are there
all the time. That is a great problem. We've had that problem a lot with capital confidential or
very popular blog out of the state capital in Albany. And of course, everybody has a screen name.
And we know certain screen names. We know they're going to be there on everything. These guys just
sit there and then they get into arguments with each other. They know each other. You know,
I know truth is mine, for example, is one of them. So that now people just call them IKTIM.
And he's up against Bruno Silvergate. And these two guys go against each other all the time.
So explain something to me, both of you, because you're both so smart. Why is it?
That if you write a letter to the Times Union, you write a letter, you sign your name. And I'm sure,
if it's anything like other reputable things, you'll probably get a call back verifying that this is
your letter. At least. And probably your letter gets edited because most people don't write to our
standard limit of length of 250 words. And probably that we need to help them make their argument a little
bit. We pointed up for them. So we have an editor who actually works with people to make their letters
better. But then anybody can write any garbage and put it on the website. And this was supposed to
be the glory, the wonder of the internet that there's unlimited space. There is no 250 word
right now on the internet. So everyone could participate. And indeed, you don't have to sit down
and take the effort to even write. You can call into some places that will put that online call,
call in letters or allowed. Or you can just sit down and tap it out on a computer screen. And that
was supposed to be great. And sometimes it really is. No one, I think, ever anticipated these regular
carmageans who go through and just, it's like, it's like, carmageans. Yes, they are. Some of them are
carmages. I've always thought of a carmagean as somebody who likes just to stir the water as opposed to
you take some great pride in that label. Yeah, as opposed to watching. But I wondered this much.
Why can't we have them sign as opposed to using these? Well, how would you know who, if it's a
real name? Well, would you put it this way? Either you can check every once in a while and see what
you see. Well, that's that you know, you could have an empire who could check. We do have
empires who check. Let me just make this clear. Every blog in the Times Union is moderated.
What has been difficult in past years, which I think we've gotten better at is making sure that our
people are a bit more seasoned in their moderating. We have had certain people moderating blogs who
really bought into the theory at the beginning. And this is true all of the country that you let
a thousand flowers bloom, you know, let anything go. Anything should go. And now we're saying, you know,
you're really creating a community where nobody wants to live if you have all the nasty stuff.
One of these suggested fixes for this problem. How can you take the promise of real
interactivity between a producer and the consumers of news and the problem that's resulted is to get
other commenters to police and monitor sites so that if there were a troll that, and I know I have
several of them on my blog. If I let in something from one of these people, other readers write it
in right away and say, you know, stop it. Here's the real point and they get it back on track to
encourage that sort of citizen moderation as one of the things that might help. I don't think so.
I don't think so. I'll be honest with you. I go on, when we have something in our town called
Topics and PIX, I guess it is. And it degenerates so badly that they start to talk about their sexual
practices with each other. They start to know, and you know you've been with your mother, you know that.
And that is really terrible stuff. Well, it happens even on YouTube, you'll call up, you know,
an operatic aria and it starts off with the quality of the music and how it compares to other
renditions. And then soon, you know, it's at the house, stupid somebody is or how they're deaf.
And then their sexual habits and it's crazy. So this happens everywhere. And now,
if you just eliminate it all, you do it properly. I think it's a matter of tweaking it. I think
you can do it. Even though Rex doesn't agree with me, I would put everybody's name, say,
you sign your name and we check everyone's while to make sure that it is your name. How do you do that?
You call them up. Well, they don't have to, oh, so they have to list their phone number two.
They list their name and their phone number. Okay, that's one way to do it. But I still think just
the very, yes, but I think the very act of making people sign their own names. God writes to me last
week. And he says too much Pete Siger on the radio. I don't want to hear anymore about Pete Siger.
It's stupid. And I'm furious because I love Pete and because he's been so generous to WMC
and all the rest of it. And the guy signs his name with like Jim or Peter, whatever. Actually,
that's not what it was. And I say, who are you? And he writes like, you have no right to ask me
who I am. I am anonymous and I have every right to be anonymous. I say, I don't have every right to
answer you. Believe me. This is it. I'm not going to engage you. So there is now a presumption of
right to be anonymous and to throw a garbage around. I don't like. But if you allow anonymity
but get rid of the garbage, that would be okay. Wouldn't it? With you? Yeah. So that's I think
basically what we should encourage. The difficulty is with something as big as the New York Times
really moderating everything is virtually impossible. Well, but the problem for you guys is not for
me, but the problem for you guys is that there have been there have been all kinds of predictions of
the no newspapers in so many years of this. I guess we're going to talk about that or maybe not.
No many newspapers in so many years and rest. Same thing with radio, by the way. I mean, the same
for them. Why would people need a local radio station if they can get the stuff digitally from
the TV is it's all that I think radio is in less trouble because you still have to drive the car
and listen to something. And I think that until they come out with self-driven cars, then yeah,
then you got then you got another whole issue. But you can still get it from digital source rather
than from your local entity. So it's just like a local newspaper. You have the same I think you're
disrupted the same way. You just haven't quite faced up to it as quickly as frankly as we have.
No, Rex, I don't think so, but why get dragged into a... Let's not enjoy the mystery. I wish all of the
media were robust. But okay, but okay. I'm just really worried about the fact that we have a
a newspaper company called Digital First, right? Digital First. Now they know what they're doing.
They're digital first because we know where we're going and it's not going to be a newspaper
so we're going to name ourselves in digital first and you need the numbers. You guys are all
need the numbers. That's your problem, Rexie. You have to be able to say to your bosses, look,
here's the traffic level. Now we can sell ads on our web pages and that's what this is all about.
And so in the same time that we can bemoan the fact that there's some nutty people who doing this
kind of stuff trolls and like. You also have the competing value of you want the numbers and the
more people who are on there yelling each other and screaming each other better off you are.
Not necessarily, right? Well, I think making money is a problem for the media. I personally like the
BBC model where the government gives it to you for the citizens we serve. If we're not doing this,
if we're not accommodating people to get hits to get revenue, then we're having fun drives that
also sap time and energy that could be going into programming. Well, I would argue the whole
fun drive thing with you because I have to think the fun drives are great times for people to get
together to say what they like, what they don't like to talk to. Except they have to say it with
their name attached. You don't accept any criticism that is anonymous, right? Basically yes. Uh-huh.
Okay, well, well, I don't know why should a listener have to tell you who they are for their
criticism to have validity? Well, I think maybe they're afraid that you're going to get even with
them that you're going to come after them or something. Well, yeah, do you go after people? I mean,
that's a terrible thing to say. Do you go after people in your newspaper? What power does the newspaper
have to go after? Oh, but actually, to your point that you raised earlier about traffic, it would be
a really wonderful thing if we could convince publishers and some enlightened publishers, I think,
are coming to this that it shouldn't be simply the number of page views that is the standard by which
we judge and sell advertising that it should rather be engagement. How much time do people spend
with it? What kind of quality interaction do you have with your viewers? And I think increasingly,
you will see that as the internet maturs and you'll see advertising being sold based upon the
engagement of the viewers and the nature of the viewership. I mean, just sit in the word you just
used to say maturs. I understood it's maturers. Maturers? Yeah. I think in the middle as you mature.
No, as you mature. It's a tea. Tea has just to sound like tnutch. Okay, now let's do
debacle debacle. Yes, absolutely. Words that you only read and you don't say too often.
Amateur. Anyway, you see that's what Mario qualms you used to say. Do we have an issue with this?
You mentioned something earlier though that was interesting too. It had to do with this question
of paper and actually I have to speak to a state journalism group next week on this very topic.
Something of a debate is coming with someone representing the Syracuse newspapers where they have
stopped doing a full newspaper seven days a week and our side, which basically has said,
we're investing in a press. We believe that there is more life ahead for print. And Jeff Bezos
was asked about this who just bought the Washington Post for $250 million Jeff Bezos the CEO of
Amazon. Thank you. And he said this to the today show. He said someday he was asked, will there
be a time when the Washington Post is non-paper? He said someday. It could be decades. And then
here's what he said, I think printed newspapers on actual paper may be a luxury item. It's sort of
like you know, people still have horses, but it's not their primary way of commuting to the office.
So, you know, will paper become the luxury way that we deliver content? And digital will be
the standard. But don't you think it has to do also with age as well?
Interestingly, Buzz has done a very interesting article. It came out of a conference where people
talked about this and the studies, the numbers show that no new newspaper subscribers or TV
viewers are being born. Both the people who watch TV regularly and read regularly that skewing
older and older and older. So, what does that mean? Well, it means either at the age of 47,
you instantly turn into a paper subscriber and turn on the TV or that increasingly they're not
looking at paper or on regular broadcast. It's interesting. I don't there there was no simple
measure of radio, but I would imagine it has to be the same that Pew's studies show that by 2015,
almost half of all television viewing will be done by folks over the age of 50. It's not just
news. Half of all television viewing will be by people over 50. I mean, yeah, my kids don't watch TV
anymore. You do it on your computer, you turn up and you watch old episodes or one episode after
another one. You're sure. It used to be serial television. It's all changed. It reminds me a lot of
Star Trek. We're Captain Kirk in the, I suppose, at 21st or 22nd century, sits there and pulls out
this thing, this object and holds it reverentially and looks at it. It's a block. And he has it,
it's like an antique's collection now because he still likes that to read the way people did in
the olden days. Amazing. Our hero, Captain Kirk, still a wonderful guy. Actually, there was this,
I think it was probably at this same conference where there was this conversation about the aging
of the newspaper reader, the TV viewer, that a conference topic emerged around the issue of what
might media titans have done differently 15 years ago as the internet age was dawning. And the
people who were in those positions said, you know, you really couldn't have done much differently.
Nowadays, we are criticized for giving away the content that we were charging for. But if you
had built what we now call a paywall around your website 15 years ago, you would have been irrelevant.
You would have. I have watched you, Rex, on this program struggle with this issue. Yeah.
And the very beginning, should we, shouldn't we, we are or not, it's just there wasn't a right answer.
No, there's no way to forestall technology any more than you could say that, you know, the
analogy of the buggy whip makers any more than every buggy whip maker could have stopped the advance
of the automobile or could have figured out, well, we've got to come up with some way for people
to buy buggy wips. Now, of course, what you do is you turn your buggy whip company into a steering
wheel company or something. But, you know, predictions, this business of who gets born and what they'll be
doing 50 years from now, sometimes that doesn't quite work out. I was struck the other day and
you're looking at me as if what is he going to say now? I always still have one. But I'm, but now,
but I was, but I was struck by the fact that they are now predicting and this has direct relevance to
what we've been talking about. I think that the first 200 year old people are being born right now.
Wow. Yeah. Really? The first 200 year people are going to be there.
200 years old. Don't watch TV and read news papers. They don't regress. It doesn't, it doesn't,
it doesn't go that way. But I think it's probably true. Look, my father lived to the right
old age, I think of 73. And now 73 is regarded as the new 50. Yeah.
Said Dr. Shartock, kind of 72 years old. One other thing about the study that we keep
referring to looked at the decline of traditional print and TV is what young and old people are
looking at. They looked at a variety of TV shows where news is administered and Colbert and the
Daily Show, that's John Stewart, have roughly double what the most outstanding print journalist
get, like 43% of the audience is between 18 and 29 for Colbert and for the Wall Street Journal,
for example, it's 24%. But it gets even worse than that, Rosemary. I mean, I read a study
a couple of years ago, which said that half of the young people in this country get all of their
news from the Daily Show. Absolutely. Actually, you could do worse and getting it off in the
day. That's what I think. At least he's telling the truth. He doesn't have to say he said, she said,
he just doesn't. He covers major issues. He does a lot of investigative stuff too. He uses some of
the techniques of turn to the century investigative reporters. I think he's pretty cool. Actually,
if, since most of the people listening to this are hearing it on a public radio station, we should
point out that NPR's numbers are very low, in fact lower than print. And lower than rush,
lift out. We have 52% of NPR listeners are below 50. So that means that 48% are, it's kind of like
television. NPR has about half of the listeners are 50 or above. And in terms of the youngest group,
18 to 29, you're right. NPR is 1. Below Rush Limbaugh. He gets 14% of his listeners are that
now. And 13% of NPR's are that young. Tell me something I don't know.
So, well, I'm just saying it's not just print readers who are leaving the network.
They're going into the quick. They're going into the quick, you know, I mean, it's just
non-dignified the way he keeps coming back to the audience that he's better than we are.
I would never reduce myself to that. Just no.
No worse than that. The network evening news was really interesting to me because it's among young
people. It's only 9% even watching and even among older cohorts, 65 and over. It's 25%.
That's like a core. These used to be so powerful, so important. And now they're really marginalized,
you could say. Absolutely. Absolutely true. If you're just joining us, the media project,
Ridge N. to Northeast Public Radio, Alan Shartak, Rosemary Armeo, and Rex Smith,
now, though my two colleagues here both have the distinction of having Ben or being faculty.
And so here's one thing I want to ask you. I don't understand this. During the shooting at the
Navy Yard in Washington, a journalism professor at Kansas University tweeted something. He said,
hashtag Navy Yard shooting, the blood is on the hands of the hashtag NRA. Next time, let it be your
son's and daughter, shame on you. And well, I think we'll let the rest of it go because it gets.
Well, I actually, I think it's the rest of it that got him into trouble. What was the
rest? He said, what was the rest? He said, may God damn you. Not like the curse, but may God damn you.
Right. And the question is this. So he was put on leave, administrative leave because of the tweet.
Now, the question that I have, he's an associate professor. I would have thought the tenure would
protect a person like that. So did I as I anxiously await a verdict on your, I thought like, wow,
I thought that was the thing I'd be protected from. I thought this was a horrible thing is that
Kansas University state Senator called for him to be fired. The NRA, a course screen bloody murder.
And it appears to have had an effect. Well, I know this is grammatically incorrect and I apologize
for it, but we say it in the virtues in terms of what you just said. And so don't I? You associate
yourself with her remarks. Yeah. And so don't I agree with you? Yeah. So it is curious, but you're
right. It Kansas, where, you know, where the the first no, no, no, no, no, no, it was constant.
Or Minnesota, depending which McCarthy you meant. No, no, I need to say McCarthy. I said,
Dorothy. Oh, Dorothy. I thought you said, Dorothy. You said, Dorothy. Oh, my goodness. We're declining
the professor did a blog commenting about all this. I thought that was interesting too. He explained
no, no, I wasn't cursing them. And I think he was careful in the way he wrote it. I was stating I
would like to see God put judgment on these people. I don't care if I'm criticized for being too
quick to judge too harsh on my criticism or too strident. The time has passed for nice cities
and tact. I hope that he prevails. It sounds to me like that should be protected free speech. And
and also protected under academic free. Yeah, absolutely. Get up to the Supreme Court. It'll be a
five-four decision against them. That could happen. Well, we'll see. Well, there's other bad things
happening legally. We have a case in Joliad, Illinois. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What was that? What's
interesting? Where the reporter actually could face jail time for not divulging a source.
A jailhouse interview. Mm-hmm. It seems quite clear that most of the mostly court cases have gone
in favor of journalists when these are involved, but the reporters want to find out how he got the
information he did, how the police reports about this case were leaked to him. And the judge in
the case is backing up the police and yes, he has to divulge this. So it's another case where the
courts are not in a very press-friendly mood these days. And Illinois has a shield log. So I
can't believe that this wouldn't be protected by the shield log. But you can have a judge. You can
run you around the block for a while. Just the cost of it. Yeah. They find he immediately find this
this report $1,000 like don't walk out until you give me $1,000, which you know for most journalists
is a that's a hefty payment. So he plainly is trying to put pressure on him to just give the
information, which is I hope not the way most of our courts operate. Excellent. One final thing here
because we invite people to participate by sending us mail at media at wamc.org. And we have a
listener who says, hello, Alan, my colleagues and I have been discussing a problem with
Ike you to take up. We never hear reporters asking the politicians who are against the
Affordable Care Act about the provisions. Are they really in favor of keeping people tied to
their employers if they have preexisting conditions, et cetera? Why aren't reporters asking the
politicians about the policy goals and how to make the provisions of the law work? So that's a
good question. It is a good one. I like that letter. It made me think one answer is that the
reporters don't know the policy issues well enough to ask great questions. Agreed.
Number two is they are asking and in the wealth of material the answers are getting lost.
And number three is the questions a little I wouldn't phrase it that way. Certainly it's definitely
pointed. It's like, well, what would you do? You know, it's challenging and we don't ask questions
in a challenging way. Well, you don't. I don't know. That's you could sometimes ask a question
in a challenging way in the interest of eliciting an interesting response. Which of course is what
she's asking? Yeah, but it does. I think the point that she's probably trying to make is are we
getting too caught up in the politics of the issue, rather than substance? Right, sure. Which is a very
fair question to ask. And I have to say I know that we have to go and I have to say that there's
still the intuitive sense on the part of many journalists that this will not make people pick up
the paper and stay with it and read it. It'll be too boring. And on that point we will have to go
folks and we hope you'll join us next week on the Media Project.
Her coat.
To get insurance, she employed Stolda Green.
She up and cut her husband's only.
