Online Journalism Review» opinion journalism

Reinventing arts journalism… by starting with a virtual summit

Sasha Anawalt — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:42:20 +0000

Sasha Anawalt is director of Arts Journalism Programs at USC Annenberg School for Communication and co-director of A National Summit on Arts Journalism.

I’m told by people who know such things that I am lousy at the elevator pitch. But the question: “Hey, Sasha, what is this National Summit on Arts Journalism?” is a natural for people to ask, especially when trying to figure out if they should pay it any attention. With the Summit only two days away, I’ve now ridden a bank of elevators.

The Summit will showcase 10 innovative online projects chosen by a dozen judges that allow us to peek into arts journalism’s future — like a TED conference, but just about journalism. We hope to explore ideas and issues that have taken unpredictable and fascinating forms by looking into these diverse digital models for keeping arts journalism alive.

This Summit is a virtual summit. Yes, there will be a live audience on Oct. 2, settled into its seats by 8:30 a.m. at USC’s Annenberg Auditorium. But the main audience is the one watching online during and after the event. How could it be otherwise? A field that’s been so deeply affected by technology must reflect that technology. The Summit is itself an experiment in form. Because the Internet allows journalists to generate, gather and distribute information and opinion from a universe of sources, shouldn’t our conference extend as far?

For the first time at USC Annenberg School for Communication, and for the first time at USC at large, online interactivity will be defined and shaped by the taping, production and editing of speakers’ presentations before the conference or summit actually begins.

We want to show the journalists’ work, their sites, their cool Flash projects, and illustrate what these 10 are talking about while they are talking. We wish to keep all presentations below the 10-minute mark. Talk about art has to be artistic; talk about journalism and financial viability should be focused and precise. The audience? A Clay Shirky here-comes-everybody one. The whole Summit? YouTube-able.

How to do all this? The solution that Summit co-director and editor of ArtsJournal.com Douglas McLennan and I came up with — in concert with Jackie Kain, executive producer, and Holly Willis and her team at USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy — is what you will see on Oct. 2 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. (PDT), streamed live on the National Arts Journalism Program website.

Doug will moderate the live event, which will include two roundtable discussions in the flesh: “The Art of Arts Journalism,” hosted by Laura Sydell of National Public Radio, with guests Jeff Chang (author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop) and New York Times reporter Seth Schiesel; and “The Business of Arts Journalism,” hosted by Andras Szanto, director of the NEA Classical Music Institute, with Richard Gingras, Salon.com CEO, and Deborah Marrow, director of The Getty Foundation.

But why do we need a National Summit on Arts Journalism? This question quickly gets personal, and each participant will have a telling answer. I heartily invite you to log on, tune in and submit your questions, answers and ideas via Twitter (hashtag: #artsj09) and to text-message on the day-of.

Yet the same question also gets professional.

In 2008, USC Annenberg School for Communication (in partnership with the five arts schools) launched a nine-month Master’s degree program in Specialized Journalism. The program, designed for arts specialists and other kinds of journalists, this year nearly quadrupled in size — defying all expectations. We all know traditional journalism is in crisis; everything is changing. Is it possible to sustain a living as a journalist? What is journalism now, and who exactly are journalists? At this frightening, exhilarating juncture, what’s the role of the arts-and-culture critic?

These questions fill the air, and they are legitimate. Change means we can all play a role, if we care to, in reinventing the field of journalism. A university, of course, affords the possibility for time dedicated to lab work, experimentation and surrounding ourselves with experts. It also provides a space for the kind of imaginative, idealistic vision that writing about the arts requires. Yet we know, in the words of Los Angeles Poverty Department theater director John Malpede, that you cannot have change without exchange. You must give something up and exchange it; you have to engage in conversations with others who are doing something utterly unlike what you are doing, if you want to move forward.

Doug McLennan has spent the past decade surveying the arts-journalism scene; his ArtsJournal.com celebrated its 10th anniversary earlier this month. The site aggregates “must-reads” in arts and culture every day, and Doug knows first-hand and better than most how many astonishing forms digital journalism takes: not only in traditional and new media, but within arts organizations and government groups, both national and municipal, grassroots and mainstream. Yet worried that too many wheels were being reinvented, he wondered what would happen if we brought new arts journalists together so they could show and share what they are doing, and hoping to do. Wouldn’t that accelerate progress in the field?

This Summit is the result. The National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and many schools and leaders at USC are on board (including – full disclosure – Online Journalism Review). Hewlett agreed to underwrite a competitive element of the Summit, offering awards of upwards of $2000 to five journalism “Public Projects,” ultimately chosen by 12 judges from a pool of 109 submissions.

I can’t tell you what the five “Public Projects” are (that would ruin the suspense), but I can say that I’ve seen all ten presentations (which includes five “Showcase Projects”) and from them have learned a few things. Social media, though not yet figured out and fully tapped, is central to our journalistic future. Some are making a living at this, but too few — yet in a capitalist society this will soon be figured out. Some very smart and even magnificent ideas and executions are out there. Still, critics and their future are the biggest unknowns.

I am sure that on Friday, I will have more epiphanies and puzzlements. But with each later viewing of the projects — available as separate entities at www.najp.org/summit and annenberg.usc.edu/najpsummit — something more will certainly come to light. That is the may be the most valuable virtue of a virtual Summit.

Check back on OJR this Friday, when editor Robert Niles reports from the ONA conference in San Francisco.

Newspaper columnists ought to be the perfect bloggers. So why aren't more doing it well?

Robert Niles — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:41:44 +0000

Newspaper columnists ought to be the perfect bloggers – the best write in a lively voice and forge a strong connection with their readers. Their work build an ongoing conversation with the communities they cover. Frankly, they’ve been blogging (in print) since long before anyone other than academics and soldiers went online.

So why aren’t more making a successful transition to online publishing? Why are so many columnists living under the same fear and uncertainty that’s consuming their newsroom coworkers? Those are a couple of the questions that I sought to address last weekend when I spoke to the annual gathering of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

This year’s conference theme was “Survive and Thrive.” (Well, we’ve drilled down to the basics now, haven’t we?) My talk was “Tips on Branding Yourself,” and I was joined by Erika Stalder of ABC Family.

I told the group that your brand in the Internet era is the public’s perception of its relationship with you, a sentiment that Erika concurred with, citing a similar quote from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos: “Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.”

Anyone writing online needs to come to this understanding: That what matters most in determining your online success is how your work is understood and acted upon by its audience – more than what your intention with the work was or the process that you used to create it. You can do work you believe to be great, but if no one reads it or no one who does cares, what was the point?

We talked during the session about Twitter, Facebook, discussion forums and website comments. Several columnists expressed their frustration with the number of tools that they’re now being asked to wield – and the the time that’s taking away from reporting and writing.

“Why should I spend half my time updating a Twitter feed if all that’s reaching is, like, 27 readers?” one columnist asked. “I’ve reached hundreds of thousands of readers in print. Has my audience shrunk to this?”

If you have fewer than 100 Twitter followers, you have a problem. But it’s not with having too many social media tools to manage. You’ve not developed your audience into an online community, one that can sustain your “brand” online even if your print gig fails.

You’ve got to start where you are at. And the same principles that apply for print columnists apply to all online and offline writers, as well. Start by explicitly inviting your readers into an ongoing conversation – then give them multiple avenues through which to contact you. These can include a Facebook page, e-mail account, blog comments and Twitter account. Your columns should include the URLs of your blog (if your column appears elsewhere, such as in print), Facebook page and Twitter feed. (Alternate them to keep the shirttail fresh, and short.) If you haven’t registered yourfirstnameyourlastname.com and made it the home of your blog, do it now.

But simply asking readers to a conversation won’t be enough to engage them. You must initiate the conversation with engaging questions. Smart columnists have been doing this for years, so it shouldn’t take much effort to get these flowing. Ask your readers questions about their own lives – what are they doing and seeing that affects the community around them?

I warned the audience against asking readers what they think. The Web has more then enough places for folks to vent their opinions. What you want to elicit are experiences – first-person accounts that other readers might relate with, drawing them into the conversation as well.

Another columnist asked about time management – a very valid concern for anyone writing online. Heck, I almost never watch TV anymore, and can’t imagine having to give up an hour or two each day to the commute I made when I didn’t work at home. I held up my iPhone and told the audience how I use it to check e-mail, read Tweets and monitor comments in every down moment I get, whether I be waiting to pick up the kids from school or in line at the grocery. True downtime is a scheduled luxury in the online publishing business.

So, I said, you’ve got to be writing about a passion. Find issues within all those in your community about which you are most passionate, and write about them. Solicit first-person accounts from your readers, and reward the best of them with a personal public response and follow-up questions. Soon, your audience, which craves your attention, will learn to deliver the quality and insight that you want. Only writing about a passion will elicit the energy and stamina that you will need to remain relevant in a hyper-competitive online information marketplace. And only your passion will animate your voice to level required to help your work stand ahead of others’.

Finally, don’t be reticent about joining other, established online communities in order to expand your audience beyond what you’ve attracted via your existing newspaper or website. One audience member commented about the trouble of getting health insurance as an independent writer (one that I share). Given the current politics around that issue, I responded that a great place to write about that would be in a political community such as DailyKos. A following developed in those communities eventually can be lead to follow you on other sites and in other forums, as well.

Social media tools are just that… tools. Don’t become so obsessed with learning the latest and most fashionable that you forget the job you’re trying to do with those tools – to build your audience into an online community.

Once you’ve engaged a few readers in a meaningful conversation on a topic about which you are passionate, you’ll find continuing that conversation across multiple media a engaging pleasure, not a time-sucking chore. Readers will see that, and want to jump in themselves, if only just to watch. Your success will elicit more success and your online community will grow.

That’s how to brand yourself online. Share your passion, and ask your readers to share theirs with you.

Editorial pages look to adapt as their communities converse online

Jim Wayne — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:30:01 +0000

A generation ago, the local newspaper editorial page provided the highest-profile forum for discussions about community issues. Editorial writers would research opinion pieces, staff and guest columnists offered their thoughts and local residents would add their voices in the letters to the editor section.

Then the Internet arrived, and the civic discourse shifted, as readers turned to local discussion boards, political blogs and community e-mail lists to talk about the issues affecting them. The newspaper-sanctioned forum grew up, moved out, and became a true community conversation. Now, some newspaper editorial board leaders are responding, seeking Web-friendly ways to restore their opinion sections’ relevance.

Editorial writers from papers big and small, from Wausau, Wisc. to Washington, D.C., locked minds in downtown L.A. last weekend to kick off the Knight Digital Media Center‘s “Best Practices: Editorial and Commentary in Cyberspace” conference.

The overarching questions Sunday: What does it mean to be a catalyst for an engaged society? And just what is the ideal balance between editorial autonomy and community conversation?

“Am I making too large a leap of faith here in drawing this conclusion that community involvement is indeed part and parcel of what we should be about?” asked moderator Michael Williams, Associate Professor of Interactive Media at Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial writer Kevin Horrigan wasn’t quite sure:

“The definition of the role of a newspaper is to print the news and raise hell. The assumption here, within this group, seems to be that you’re leading a community conversation. That in itself is a change from the traditional role of the newspaper. I think it’s a good idea, but I’m not sure the newspaper industry as a whole is totally grasping that.”

Begetting this retort from The Portland Oregonian‘s George Rede:

“I guess I would say, without giving up the traditional role of ‘reporting the news and raising hell,’ this is another layer. If you aren’t doing it already, you have to do it. Given the changes in technology, there’s no excuse for not going down some of these paths. We might be stumbling along the way. We may not see exactly where we’re going to wind up. But the means to engage our readership have changed, and I think changed for the better.”

From monitored blogs to cartoon caption contests to reader/columnist programs, folks in the room did offer promise. That said, when Williams polled the room to gauge whose sites have employed some form of video, only half the hands went up. And of those, none could own up to running anything that was actually shot and edited by an editorial writer, a process one writer described as a “very labor-intensive” endeavor. Not surprising, per se, but perhaps a telling anecdote about the generational status of most editorial board members.

Show And Tell

The most compelling, and telling, answers in the opening session sprang from a best-practices share session, where the 20-odd newsies unveiled their range of active editorial-page endeavors.

A sample:

In November, The Portland Oregonian asked readers to nominate themselves for the paper’s op-ed board. Rede said they selected 12 of 250 respondents, based on résumés and writing samples, and asked them to write one opinion piece a week, on the topic of their choice, for 12 weeks.

“We have our own soap box seven days a week,” he said. “We would like them to be able to bring issues to conversation that matter to them.”

Those who have shown their ability to write professionally and meet deadlines have earned the right to blog directly to the Oregonian, unsupervised and unedited. Want to get to know these “citizen journalists” a little better? No problem: They’ve posted video interviews with each of the “community writers.”

In Wausau, Wis., Peter Wasson at the Daily Herald is writing the Sunday editorial five days in advance, on Tuesday, and opening it up for pre-publication feedback.

“At the end of the day Tuesday, I send it to a panel of 15 or 20 readers who have volunteered on our Readers React board,” explained Wausau Wasson. “And by the end of Thursday, they send responses to our editorial.”

Wouldn’t that compromise timeliness, you ask? “I’ve got six other days a week to be timely,” he said.

Miriam Pepper said her Kansas City Star‘s Unfettered Letters section dishes out its print-published letters as individual blog posts, allowing readers a forum beneath each of them for replies; unedited, unmonitored and sans-length limit.

At The Charlotte Observer, “You Write The Caption” invites readers to whip up their own wit for cartoonist Kevin Siers’ Monday cartoons.

Challenges remain

A selection of notable quotes from participants:

Editorial Page Editor Gina Acosta of the Washington Post: “Unless you’re a columnist, no one knows who is on the editorial board, what their expertise is, where they came from, what their experience is. There’s no interactivity between the editorial board and the community. And we get letters and calls from people all the time asking, ‘who’s on the editorial board? How can I set up an editorial board meeting?’ And it’s a very closed, hidden process.”

Deron Snyder, Editorial Writer, Fort Myers News-Press: “There’s always been community conversation. The fact is that we’ve never been involved in it. Once we printed our paper, we would let the community talk about it and we were done; we were working on the next day. What I like about the way things are going now is that we remain a part of the conversation that we start. We start the conversation by our stories and editorials… We can help foster that conversation. It doesn’t mean we have to change our views, necessarily.”

Tonya Jameson, Online Columnist, The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer: “I think we’ve always… had that opportunity for the readers to respond, because everybody has a Letters to the Editor page. So people still have that discourse within the newspaper, but now we are moving forward with blogs and having these ways for people to actually go back and open up a conversation. I do agree, though, that it’s an arrogant attitude that we put the news out there, we put our opinion out there, and readers are supposed to accept it and we go from there. I think that’s what turns off younger readers from newspapers.”

Laurence Reisman, Editor, Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers: “It’s one thing to bring people to an editorial board meeting and have them talk about it with us. But I think it’s much more powerful to bring readers on sides of all issues together in a forum—whether it’s an online forum or a meeting room like this—where they can discuss the issues. And if it changes our opinions after listening to some of these things and doing more research, that’s great. But I think helping to bring the community together is an important thing.”

Michael Landauer, Assistant Editorial Page Editor, The Dallas Morning News (on cross-pub linking): “News isn’t going to do it. Our front news site is not going to link to an investigative report at the [Fort Worth] Star Telegram, ever,” said Michael Landauer of The Dallas Morning News. “But we’ve done it several times where I’ve linked to an editorial out of the Star Telegram. And nobody blinks at that.”

Kevin Horrigan, Editorial Writer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “That’s not the role of the newspaper. We’re supposed to say which one is right.”

Beating the big guns on the Disney beat

Robert Niles — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:21:06 +0000

Last week, the Walt Disney Company announced a $1 billion-plus revamp of its Disney’s California Adventure theme park, which has been plagued by low paid attendance and poor customer reviews since it opened in Anaheim in February 2001. The Los Angeles Times detailed the plans in a story the morning of Disney’s press conference, writing that the plans were “first reported on the Wall Street Journal’s website.”

Actually, the plans first had been reported months earlier, on a website called MiceAge, run by long-time Disney-watcher Al Lutz.

I’ve been covering theme parks, online and off, for more than a decade. But Lutz is the dean of theme park reporters on the Internet. A former music recording producer, Lutz started writing about Disneyland on USENET, then on a series of websites. For fans used to ever-positive coverage about Disney and its theme parks in the traditional press, Lutz provided a bracing splash of reality. His reports detailed an ugly side at the so-called Happiest Place on Earth, from chipped paint and burned-out lights to maintenance cutbacks that other critics charged endangered the public safety. Two fatal accidents at the park, later blamed on park personnel and mainentance failures, brought more attention to Lutz’s critical work.

In 2003, he left MousePlanet, a Disneyland news site founded by a group of USENET veterans, to go solo on MiceAge. Since then, he’s added other writers his site, where they’ve broken many stories about developments at Walt Disney theme parks, including the plans to revamp California Adventure.

Despite the fact that we’ve covered the same industry for years, I’d not had the chance to meet Lutz in person. So last week, I called and arranged a get-together, where we talked about how Lutz found his way into Web publishing, as well as how he’s managed to build a part-time interest into a news-breaking bully pulpit about a multi-billion-dollar industry. An edited transcript follows:

OJR: Tell us about your background and how you got into reporting news about Disney on the Web.

Lutz: It wasn’t anything that was planned. I used to work for RCA Records; spent 10 years there. When the problems started hitting in the music business, I got out. Then I got into helping with my family business, the [real estate] appraisal business, which isn’t going so good right now. [Smiles.] But I had started going on to USENET, because that had fascinated me when we’d started talking about it in the music business.

I started on alt.disney.disneyland. There was one guy handling the Disneyland FAQ at that point, and he’d kind of given up on it so I took it over because I got tired of answering the same questions all the time — what time is Fantasmic! this weekend?, you know. Then Werner Weiss from Yesterland [a website devoted to now-closed Disneyland attractions] contacted me and said ‘You really should have a website,’ and that was the start of the DIG [Disneyland Information Guide].

It just started as an FAQ, but then we developed it into a gossip column. I think having the viewpoint is what’s important to me. Because that’s one thing they’ll kill you for on the Web is not having one.

OJR: How often do you file a Disneyland update on MiceAge, and what goes into preparing each update?

Lutz: I don’t determine the timing. The timing is determined by when I confirm things and when there’s some news to report. To me, a press event is not news. News is finding out about a make-over of a park, or an attraction getting a new ride system.

OJR: What’s been Disney’s reaction to what you’ve done?

Lutz: It depends upon the arm of the company. The parks division; they’re not real happy. The other divisions, movies and music, they’re fine. They appreciate the coverage and we have a good working relationship with them.

Did you see the coverage on Finding Nemo [a new attraction at Disneyland] and what happened with that? They invited in all the media, but they put the bloggers in the walkway by the Matterhorn [a location many yards away from the Finding Nemo ride]. That’s what they think of the Web. They put them in Siberia. I feel badly that they don’t understand that we reach more people in one day than all of these podunk newspapers that they fly out to cover these events.

You have a culture there which is very secretive. So for employees, instead of getting information from their bosses, they are getting it from the Web. And it creates this hostile environment toward the Web. They could correct it by informing their own people about stuff. There was one time when someone told me that they’d walked through Team Disney Anaheim on a Tuesday after an update and all the computer screens were up and they were reading it to find out what was going on. What’s funny is that I’d taken that same walk through the Simpsons animation people and they had all their computer screens on MiceAge, too. It’s interesting the people it reaches to.

OJR: How long did it take for you to cultivate a network of sources within the Walt Disney Company?

Lutz: It just kind of happened. People wanted to get the word out about stuff. Particularly during the [former Disneyland president Paul] Pressler era. There were a lot of people who were concerned. Before the Columbia accident, before the Big Thunder accident [two fatal accidents involving rides at Disneyland], people were concerned and they started talking.

I think that it is important to put a light on some of this stuff.

OJR: Compare and contrast what you do in covering Disney with what’s happening at local newspapers and TV?

Lutz: I like to sit down with a newspaper and learn something. I don’t learn anything from most of the reporting that’s going on nowadays. They tell you something that’s happened, but they don’t give you analysis or insight. The political area still maintains that, but the business area, in particular, has been lacking.

The other things that gets me is that they don’t do more alliances with the Web. Saying ‘hey, we can’t have a specialist reporter, so why don’t we put you on and make you exclusive to us for so much a month. So don’t talk to the other guys; talk to us first when anything breaks and you’ll be our stringer at a lower cost than maintaining a full-priced person.’

Everything’s in transition right now. I think the future is quite bright for the Web. But it’s very painful getting there.

The good thing is that we’re reaching a point traffic-wise where the numbers are finally starting to make some sense.

OJR: Tell me a little about the business side of MiceAge.

Lutz: There’s nothing formal. All the alliances we have are informal. It’s not a real business per se because we haven’t reached those levels where I can pay my rent with it, though it is certainly a lot better than it used to be.

OJR: Are you doing a revenue split with the other writers?

Lutz: They all benefit is some way or another. Alain [Littaye, who covers Disneyland Paris], for example, sells books. And he sells quite a few. At ninety bucks a pop, seventy bucks, he does pretty good. Kevin [Yee, who covers Walt Disney World,] sells a lot of books and he gets coverage from other areas for what he does. For Sue [Kruse], it’s pretty simple. She likes covering the press events and doing all that fun stuff. She runs an antique store, normally. So there’s a trade-off for everybody.

What they do is they submit a story then I handle all the layout, design and pick the graphics and do all that stuff. I’m a real big believer in a magazine-type of layout. I like blogs, but I don’t think they have a soul, or a life like a magazine does.

OJR: What advice would you give to someone who wanted to start their own “MiceAge”-style site, covering some other topic?

Lutz: Two words: Be honest. Have a viewpoint and be honest. People respond to opinion. They might not like what you have to say, but they will respond to it.

OJR: Some traditional journalists might find that statement a bit contradictory.

Lutz: Well, I’m not a newspaper. I think that in a balanced world, you’d have both, just like a newspaper has a columnist. If I’m telling you something and giving you my opinion on it then I expect you to be smart enough to know what the facts are and what my opinion is about the facts.

When you say theme parks or Disney, people just don’t take you seriously. What’s funny is that when Eisner and Wells came in, they had a plan to sell all the parks. Then they looked at the books and said ‘my God, these Disney brothers knew what they were doing.’ Whenever they had a bad period, the parks fueled everything. It just happened with NBC Universal. They were going to sell everything, then they looked at the books and said ‘my God, this is a cash cow.’ I don’t think that even the business reporting elite in the mainstream media understand what the theme park business is.

Dick Cook and John Lasseter are former theme park people. All the people at Disney who are involved in films are former theme park people. There’s going to be an even tighter integration now, then ever before between these properties, because it works. It brings in cold, hard cash that they don’t have to split with anyone, like they have to do in a theater.

And why not a wiki?: Blogosphere lights up over 'wikitorials'

Robert Niles — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 12:35:54 +0000

[Let's get to the disclaimers right away, rather than burying them at the end, after you've read the piece: OJR Editor Robert Niles is a former member of the National Conference of Editorial Writers and newspaper editorial writer. He also has worked as a Senior Producer at latimes.com and staff writer for the Los Angeles Times.]

Let’s back off Michael Kinsley, okay?

The L.A. Times Opinion Editor and his staff have been catching heck from some writers after Editorial Page Editor Andrés Martinez announced last week that The Times would introduce “‘wikitorials’ — an online feature that will empower you to rewrite Los Angeles Times editorials.”

“This week The Los Angeles Times announced its intention to exile the square and stodgy voice of authority farther yet,” The New York Times’ Stacy Schiff declared. “Let’s hope the interactive editorial will lead directly to the interactive tax return. On the other hand, I hope we might stop short before we get to structural engineering and brain surgery. Some of us like our truth the way we like our martinis: dry and straight up.”

Cute, but Schiff’s dig assumes the pros always get it right. Let’s just say that if structural engineers showed the same skepticism toward their work as many professional editorial writers showed toward the U.S. administration’s claims about Iraq, I’d be choosing the ferry instead of the bridge whenever I needed to cross a river.

Talk of wikis inevitably elicit rants about Wikipedia, the free-for-all dictionary where users can create and revise entries, even to the point of rewriting history. Neither Martinez nor Kinsley have publicly revealed details of how their “wikitorials” will work. But the Wikipedia model need not be the only one to guide wiki publishers.

At OJR, we restrict editing access on our wikis to our registered users, who must provide a working e-mail address to register.

A news publisher could limit write access on the wiki to an invited group of readers with first-hand experience on a topic.

Or, a publisher could adopt an “open source journalism” model, opening a wiki to revision for a limited time, with an editor stitching together the best evidence and arguments from its versions for later print publication.

“We are no longer couch potatoes absorbing whatever mass media many funnel our way,” OJR Senior Editor J.D. Lasica writes in his new book, “Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation.” “We make our own media. In many ways, we are our own media.”

So why not try something different to engage the digital generation?

Despite the protests, what The Times has proposed is not all that radical a change. On a limited scale, newspaper editorial writing shares much in common with wikis. Both are collective efforts, reflecting the view of a group of writers, rather than that of an individual. And both strive to report an enduring truth that rises encompasses more than just a single point of view.

While Schiff lambasted reader participation in the editorial process, Timothy Noah at Kinsley’s old site, Slate, suggested that Kinsley abolish editorials at The Times altogether, arguing that papers ought to expand op-ed columns into the editorial page space.

“The genre has certain built-in defects,” Noah wrote. “One is that editorials typically lack sufficient length to marshal evidence and lay out a satisfactory argument. Instead, they tend toward either timidity, at one extreme, or posturing, at the other. Almost every editorial I’ve ever read in my life has fallen into one of two categories: boring or irresponsible.”

Having spent a few years’ of my life on an editorial page staff, I will not dispute Noah’s pessimistic view of the craft. Too many editorials stink. But a great many columns and traditional news stories die on the page, too.

Too much traditional journalism amounts to little more than stenography. If a source fails to provide an appropriate conclusion, the reporter will not draw it – even if all necessary supporting evidence is there.

Editorial writing not only allows conclusions, it demands them. Great editorial writers work like appellate court judges, weighing available evidence in the context of past decisions. Yet they must write for more than attorneys and scholars. Their words must engage and inspire an entire community to appropriate action.

Yes, most editorial writers fail by those standards. That’s because too many publishers treat the editorial page as a dumping ground for aging reporters, or, worse, a private forum to do favors for or settle scores with the paper’s sources. Either way, readers don’t matter.

Trashing the editorial page to give newshole to columnists won’t change that attitude. Nor will it give journalists, including opinion writers, additional resources to do more reporting.

News publishers would do better to refresh their editorial pages with innovations that draw more readers into the process of crafting this institutional voice. Why rely on the limited knowledge and reporting resources of a handful of editorial writers when you could ask your entire community to gather and examine evidence?

Sure, some papers ask established community leaders to sit in on an editorial board meeting now and then. Yawn. Declining readership and diminished influence demand a more aggressive response.

What news publishers need is a tool that will allow any interested readers a seat at the table, with the ability to help direct what ought to be their community’s most powerful voice.

Something like, oh, say, a wiki.

Can the Internet rejuvenate editorial cartooning?

Robert Niles — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 17:39:19 +0000

Dale Neseman

Daryl Cagle

Don Asmussen

Dale Neseman is the local editorial cartoonist for the Hamburg (NY) Sun. He’s also the local editorial cartoonist for the Voice News in New Baltimore, Michigan. And at the Jupiter (Fla.) Courier, as well as about 20 other small newspapers around the country. How does he stay local without being local?

Neseman had a brainstorm in 1997 to start drawing cartoons based on local issues just by reading newspaper stories online and e-mailing submissions. To his surprise, small newspapers jumped at the chance to get local-issue cartoons from a freelancer living elsewhere rather than to pay a full-time staffer.

The Internet has changed the way editorial cartoonists distribute their work and compete with others, while also allowing them to broaden their ideas into brief animations. Though the initial dot-com boom for animations (remember Mondo Media and Shockwave?) waned long ago, the current rebound in online advertising and political satire (think “The Daily Show” and JibJab) might bring another wave of interest to the old art form of political cartoons.

Neseman, for his part, has succeeded even as a low-tech guy, with a dial-up connection and without a Web site to showcase his work. He has won awards in states outside of his hometown of Hamburg, New York, and gets paid about $25 to $40 per cartoon.

“Fortunately, in a lot of cases, different small towns — and even larger towns — have a lot of the same issues, maybe school taxes or plowing roads, or general taxes,” Neseman told me. “So a lot of these places have a lot of the same problems. So I can tweak a cartoon that I’ve done in the past, and I don’t have to reinvent the wheel with each cartoon.”

Neseman’s editor at the Voice News, Donna Remer, doesn’t mind a whit that he doesn’t live in southeast Michigan. She said that one cartoon that dealt with water problems in New Haven, Michigan, led to a citizens’ group using it on T-shirts they wore to village council meetings.

“I’m sure they didn’t realize he lives out of state,” Remer said via e-mail. “The Internet and e-mail are changing the way all journalists work, and cartoonists are no exception. The trick is to use the efficiencies these technologies offer without compromising our very basic commitment to local content, relevant to our readers.”

Economies of scale

Despite Neseman’s modest success, he still works part-time as a graphic designer. These are the worst of times and the best of times for editorial cartoonists. Newspapers have been cutting full-time editorial cartoonist jobs down to the bone, and prices paid in syndication seem to drop by the minute. But the Web has brought new business opportunities for popular cartoonists, with global distribution and the chance for self-syndication.

Veteran cartoonist Daryl Cagle has been in the eye of the storm for online cartoons. His Cagle.com Pro Cartoonists Index was once lavishly funded by Slate and MSN, even allowing him to pay cartoonists for featuring their work online. That hub has allowed cartoonists to see each other’s work, exposing repeated or clichéd ideas to fellow colleagues.

After drastic cuts at Slate a few years ago, Cagle was on the verge of shuttering the site before Slate and the participating cartoonists agreed to a more austere budget. Slate continues to prize its collection of editorial cartoons, with Cagle’s index and Doonesbury.com. The site, now owned by the Washington Post Co., would even consider adding more cartoons or political animations in the future, according to its new publisher, Cliff Sloan.

And Cagle has built a thriving syndication service of his own called Cagle Cartoons, where he hawks custom cartoons and sells subscription packages to some 800 newspapers from his stable of cartoonists. He has four employees for the syndication business, but he doesn’t think major syndicates take political cartoonists that seriously as a business.

“In the eyes of the major syndicates, editorial cartoons are like the retarded stepchilds of the comic strips,” Cagle said. “The big syndicates are interested in selling comic strips because you can get the plush Garfield and Opus and Snoopy, which you don’t get with political cartoons. There isn’t a lot of money in political cartoons, and it isn’t something that big syndicates are interested in, but they still like to offer a broad range of services.”

And while the Net offers a way for cartoonists to sell merchandise such as books through online stores directly to readers, it’s tough to break into the business and establish new talent with so much competition for attention online and a low barrier to entry.

“It’s a tough market for political cartoonists to try to make a living,” Cagle said. “I get unsolicited submissions from a gazillion cartoonists and it’s sad. ‘Where can I get a job as a political cartoonist?’ I don’t know. It’s a big lake, and the lake is receding, and the fish are flopping on the shore. … What I tell college kids and aspiring cartoonists is that there are 85 cartoonists with full-time jobs, and it’s a much better plan for your career to count on getting into the NBA or NFL.”

Chris Pizey is CEO of UClick, the online arm of Andrews McMeel Universal, the largest independent newspaper syndicator. Pizey has seen the boom and bust cycle for comics online, including the more political Doonesbury.com and the fuzzy Garfield.com. When ad money dried up, Slate picked up Doonesbury online, and Pizey helped launch a subscription service called MyComics.com and even a wireless service, GoComics.com.

Pizey told me that business has improved on newspaper sites after the bust.

“We saw a lot of attrition on the non-newspaper sites [during the bust], but on the newspaper sites, it’s stayed pretty consistent, and it’s starting to grow nicely again over the past year as the ad market has picked up,” he said. “They’re looking at how to engage new users, and comics and puzzles are a great way to do that. They’ve been working in newspapers for 100 years, and they work just as well on news sites.”

UClick has even tried an online incubator site for newbies called ComicsSherpa, where they charge aspiring cartoonists for space on the site. Pizey says UClick is now offering four or five of the best ones in syndication online, while United Media picked up one in print. But he’s not overzealous about an online cartooning career.

“Revenue on the Web is still difficult,” he said. “It’s still hard to generate enough revenues for an artist to produce a daily comic strip. We’re just getting to the point in the next 18 months, where that will start to be realistic. And we’ll be able to identify new talent and generate enough revenue and can provide a daily comic experience across the Web. And eventually we’ll have a new comic experience, whether that’s animated or whatever comes next.”

Getting re-animated

UClick dabbled in animated editorial cartoons before the dot-com bubble burst, and Pizey is keen to find an animated series. But right now, there’s only one prominent editorial cartoonist doing animation online as a full-time freelancer: Mark Fiore. Fiore started out doing static cartoons for the San Francisco Examiner, and even drew them from Boulder, Colorado, back in 1992 — without the benefit of the Web to follow San Francisco local news.

“I got a print subscription to the Examiner, which cost an arm and a leg,” Fiore told me. “It was like $100 per month or more. I got the papers in paper bags about a week later, 5 to 7 days after they were published. I’d do a packet of cartoons on local San Francisco issues and FedEx them back to the Examiner. It was a very expensive, money-losing situation, but that’s how we had to do it in the old days.”

Fiore eventually moved to Los Angeles, where he learned animation and tried to make the Hollywood scene. After giving up on that and moving north to San Francisco, Fiore freelanced for various California newspapers and got his dream job as staff cartoonist for the San Jose Mercury News. Unfortunately, that was right as the dot-com downturn started, and Fiore had grown accustomed to the freelance lifestyle. He left the Mercury News and started doing animations regularly for various news sites and e-zines.

Now he’s been able to support himself doing one animation per week, and doing a small self-syndicated run to Working For Change, AOL, Village Voice, as well as SFGate and MotherJones.com. He charges about $300 per outlet per animation, and would like to add more outlets, without overexposing himself and having to lower his price.

“If you’re drawing for a cartoon locally in Dubuque then there’s no problem if it also runs in Des Moines,” Fiore said. “But on the Web people can flip around so fast. I’m trying to keep up a level of scarcity, but I don’t want to be quite so scarce.”

Fiore also started selling DVDs of his work, just as the duo at JibJab had done before the election. He sold 200 copies before he even had finished making the DVD. But despite his success at skewering every aspect of the Bush administration’s foibles, Fiore remains alone as a successful editorial animator online. “I’d rather be a pioneer than an anomaly,” he said. “I hope there’s other people that come along and do this.”

Don Asmussen, the staff editorial cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle, has experience doing political animations for dot-com startup Mondo Media. In fact, he held two full-time jobs in ’98-’99 as cartoonist for the Chronicle and animator for Mondo — doing one animation per week during that time. Asmussen’s animations are much longer, fuller productions — and he had the help of other animators and producers at Mondo. But the economics never worked out.

Asmussen told me that banner ads weren’t working then and that no one would sit through an ad before or during a three-minute animation. Plus, the online audience at the time didn’t have an interest in political spoofs.

“My biggest concern is that the people who are really into political satire tend to be a little older, and kids tend to be into social satire like ‘The Simpsons,’” Asmussen said. “With political satire, we got into this weird area where the audience isn’t really into computers, and the younger people who would access your stuff easily would be into a different type of humor. But that might have changed in the last couple of years, with ‘The Daily Show’ changing what people expect with political humor. The audience will be there, but I’m not sure if the money will be.”

Asmussen’s popular “Bad Reporter” editorial strip in the Chronicle was just picked up by Universal Press Syndicate, and he’s hoping to start doing animations for SFGate. He sees animation as the wave of the future for editorial cartoonists, forever stuck in a one-frame, one-liner joke.

Meanwhile, UClick’s new wireless service, GoComics.com, has carriage by Sprint, Verizon, and Orange so far. Though still in its infancy, the service had 2.5 million downloads of comics, cell wallpapers and ringtones in the past year, and UClick’s Pizey says it’s the fastest growing part of his business.

But Cagle isn’t ready to jump on the cellular bandwagon yet, saying he was offered a wireless deal that wouldn’t pay him money for two years.

Whether the Net can bring a renaissance to political cartooning or not, the time seems ripe for political spoofs, and the instant nature of e-mail and viral marketing remain a breeding ground for visual and animated satire. And as Neseman has proven, you don’t have to be a local to draw locally.

“I’m thinking about doing six months in Florida,” Neseman told me. “That’s simple. I just have to put a computer under my arm and go south.”