Minnesota Independent » Journalism

Event: What’s the future of global journalism?

Paul Schmelzer — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:39:06 +0000

Imagine a typical map of the world. Then look at the image above, which represents how Americans in February 2007 saw the world based on the news they received. Each country is represented by the number of seconds U.S.-based news outlets spent on stories about other countries. The disproportionate coverage of the U.S. didn’t come from a lack of international news: Iraq (in yellow on the map) was the biggest foreign story that month, but there was also the release in Paris of a major report tying global warming to human activities, North Korea had announced it’d dismantle its nuclear facilities, and flooding in Indonesia caused $1 billion in damage. But the story that got covered more than all others? The death of Anna Nicole Smith.

The map is part of the lead anecdote in a presentation by Alisa Miller, CEO of Public Radio International, at the 2008 TED conference. Miller will be expanding on the issue and going into other territory at a panel tonight at the Humphrey Institute. Titled “Diverse Voices and Perspectives: The Future of Global Journalism,” the discussion will include M’shale publisher Tom Gitaa and Nghi Huyhn, publisher and editor of the Asian American Press, with Miller in discussing how media consolidation and newer technologies are impacting global newsgathering. Details on the event, which is organized by the Minnesota International Center, here. Video of Miller’s TED talk after the jump.

Journalists’ group: Intimidating reporters ‘never works’

Paul Schmelzer — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:38:02 +0000

The Minnesota chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the country’s largest organization of reporters and editors, has just released a statement in response to recent confrontations between local police and media-makers in the weeks prior to the Republican National Convention. Calling actions against a KSTP photographer and a trio of New York new-media artists “definite warning signs,” the SPJ states that efforts “to intimidate journalists never work. Such misplaced heavy-handedness only escalates tensions–something we don’t need as thousands of respected delegates fill the convention hall next week and thousand more citizens take to the streets to express themselves.”

The entire statement:

Police confiscating reporting equipment, prohibiting journalists from covering news events, and hassling photographers are definite warning signs as we head into the Republican National Convention. The Society of Professional Journalists is discouraged to learn of such tactics

recently in the name of public safety. We hope these are isolated missteps by local law enforcement officials before the big event arrives and police have more important matters to attend to.

Three out-of-town citizen journalists, here to document events happening outside the Xcel Energy Center, had their belongings–including cameras and notebooks–confiscated by Minneapolis police while in Northeast Minneapolis. Police claim the three were trespassing, but no charges have yet been filed. The three who where detained maintain there was no such trespassing and their interaction with police was an attempt to intimidate them because the group they represent has documented police abuse in the past.

A KSTP-TV photographer entered a Minneapolis city office where a group of protesters staged a sit-in. Police informed the photographer he could not shoot pictures and pushed him out of the room.

Let’s hope our local police are not as reckless as those in Denver, who arrested an ABC TV producer this week. The producer was investigating the influence of wealthy donors at the Democratic National Convention. Police grabbed him by the neck, handcuffed him and hauled him downtown for ‘trespassing’ on a public sidewalk. Is this the type of threat the public should be worried about during a high profile political event?

Attempts to intimidate journalists, whether professional or volunteer, never work. Such misplaced heavy-handedness only escalates tensions–something we don’t need as thousands of respected delegates fill the convention hall next week and thousand more citizens take to the streets to express themselves. Certainly, police face an honorable and difficult task protecting the public from those who intend harm. But those same protectors lose credibility when they invoke “Homeland Security” as a pretext for stifling attempts at legitimate expression.

How well the Twin Cities are portrayed on the worldwide political stage relies on cool heads prevailing, even when rhetoric runs hot. It is something Minnesotans are and should be known for.

MnIndy Video: Detained Glass Bead videographer on policing in the age of YouTube

‘Standardized, Apolitical, Sun-Baked’: Boston Paper on City Pages’ New Owner

Paul Schmelzer — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 17:14:21 +0000

When the merger of the Village Voice and New Times, a chain of alternative weeklies based in Arizona, was announced in late 2005, it set off big changes at Voice-owned papers across the country. At the New York flagship itself, some of its best known names were let go, including political writer James Ridgeway and Robert Christgau, the music critic who founded the paper’s 34-year institution, the Pazz & Jop poll. Locally, it has meant the departures of City Pages’ editor Steve Perry, columnist Jim Walsh and reporter Britt Robson. In a story published Wednesday, the Boston alternative weekly The Phoenix wrote that’s all part of New Times’ plan. In the article, Adam Reilly wrote of the merger and its aftermath, asserting that it’s well known that the company’s management is working to get its newly acquired papers to toe a line that matches their “standardized, apolitical, Sun-baked vision” of what alternative journalism should be.

But what’s striking, he wrote, “is how quickly and decisively defenders of the old left-leaning decentralized VVM ethos have been routed.” While Perry wouldn’t comment for the piece, Britt Robson did, extensively. He said he has nothing against new editor Kevin Hoffman, who, at 30 years of age, has far less experience in both journalism and the Twin Cities than much of the paper’s editorial staff, than with the philosophy his hiring exposes. His beef is with the fact that a manager based in Denver picked a guy in Cleveland to run a paper that provides a vital news service to Minneapolis and St. Paul.

When New Times’ Andy Van De Voorde introduced Hoffman to the employees who had no advance knowledge of his hiring, recalled Robson, “he did it by saying, ‘This guy was kicking our ass for the competition, so we figured it was a good idea to hire him to go kick other people’s asses.’ That’s emblematic of how they do things. It’s this kind of cheapskate-tough-guy swagger.”

Whether Robson’s fears — or the predictions that City Pages, like other New Times papers, will be defanged of its political bite — come to pass will be discovered slowly as each Hoffman-edited issue comes off the printing press.