I don’t think a lot of people noticed this story on the Daily Press Web site this week or, if they did, grasped its importance. Maybe I’m wrong. But it is important, and (hopefully) points the way towards an exciting new era for the Daily Press, Hesperia Star, Desert Dispatch and other papers in our little corner of the Freedom Communications empire:
HESPERIA — One motorist was killed and another seriously injured early Wednesday morning in a crash that shut down all traffic on Main Street near Topaz for at least two hours.
An eastbound motorist apparently strayed onto the right curb, then overcorrected and veered to the left across all lanes before crashing into a westbound green Honda.
The motorist in the green Honda was killed, while the driver of the other car was airlifted to an area trauma center.
Other than not having a byline, pretty standard stuff for the Daily Press site, perhaps. Or perhaps not:
For more on the story, see Thursday’s Daily Press.
That line at the bottom referencing the full story the next day tells it all: This was news that was being published on the site between print editions and that would not, in this form, ever appear on paper.
Once upon a time, newspapers could afford to create “extra” editions, to let everyone know when major breaking news had occured. The economics of that practice, along with broadcast media that could do it faster and less expensively, killed it off pretty well. I’ve never been at a paper that printed an extra edition while I was there, although a few had in the past.
The Internet can change that.
So often invoked as the scary boogeyman by the old guard in the newspaper industry, the Internet is a printing press essentially without cost. Creating a new Web page for readers to view doesn’t cost measurably much more than having them read the page that you created several hours ago. And with that epiphany in hand, the industry can leverage newsgathering — particularly local newsgathering — that the broadcasting companies cannot, with a credibility that few bloggers/citizen journalists currently have. The biggest papers — the ones with more than three people on their New Media staffs — are already dipping their toes in this water, although mostly just with Associated Press feeds.
It was a small step. The Daily Press site is still static pages that have to be manually updated (hand-coded) to make a change or to add a story. Kate Rosenberg, or whoever wrote that initial breaking news piece, couldn’t just pull up a browser window on her computer in the newsroom and add the story, which an editor could then approve and send to the site.
But it’s the first step on a journey that could lead to some very exciting places. In 50 years, I don’t believe that anyone will differentiate between a print news company, a television news company or a radio news company. We will all be producing text, video and audio, which our readers will use as they wish. All the end-user wants is timely, accurate and convenient news. There’s no point in waiting 50 years for us to get there. So it’s exciting to begin that journey, no matter how large the step.
More steps to follow. Soon.
Jenn and I enjoy Netflix.
Partially it’s the lack of late fees. We, OK, I was always late returning rentals to Blockbuster in North Hollywood, and even one day late made a rental go from a fun thing to “we spent how much money on that crappy movie?”
Partially it’s the selection. Good luck finding Bullitt in your local video store, unless your store is located in 1968.
And partially it’s the convenience.
But Jenn went on a binge when we first started with the service, watching the movies the moment they came in, and sending them back out the same day. After a while, she started noticing that it was harder and harder to get the “hot” movies the company carried. While I don’t think most people are getting 20 or more Netflix movies a month (although maybe families with young kids are), if you get a dozen or more movies a month from them, you’re in a less-profitable category of customer for them (they want you to enjoy the no late fees thing and leave your DVD on top of the TV for months and months while paying that monthly fee) and they throttle you back a little, forcing you to watch less-popular older movies instead for a bit. (You still do get the hot movies eventually, though. You’re just in line behind the 1 movie every six months guy.)
Currently waiting at home for viewing this weekend: The final disc of Sopranos Season 5, Wedding Crashers and Just Like Heaven. (Guess which one is the Jenn movie.)
(And Borelli, if you’re reading this, sign up for Netflix already.)
Daily Press editor Don Holland’s decision to run the Danish cartoon showing the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban has raised some eyebrows in the media, both regionally and nationally.
The mindless violence by Islamic radicals is par for the course. But what is incredible is that the Associated Press, which distributes news stories and photos from across the globe, has decided that you shouldn’t see it.
The Daily Press is one of the very few American newspapers that is publishing the cartoon. The point is not whether it is offensive or not. The point is that it is part of a worldwide news story.
The fact that radical Muslims are going berserk over a cartoon says more about their mindset than it does about a cartoon.
AP’s Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll says AP won’t “distribute content that is known to be offensive, with rare exceptions.”
What is offensive is that AP fancies itself to be the guardian of good taste for thousands of American newspapers rather than letting individual newspapers make that decision.
AP’s philosophy also strikes at the heart of a free press and the elementary principles of libertarian thought — that individuals have the God-given right to read what they please and decide for themselves what is and isn’t offensive.
AP has distributed countless controversial images, presumably without intending offense. But some could argue that the historic image of the Saigon police chief executing a Viet Cong spy was offensive. Years ago, the Daily Press received numerous calls when we published a photo of victims of the Rawandan genocide. Certainly that was a newsworthy, albeit disturbing, image.
To be fair, I’m not surprised that Don ran the cartoon. I’m mostly surprised that so few other newspapers have.
The old guard media-on-the-media publication, Editor & Publisher, specifically mentioned the Daily Press as one of four American papers listed to run the cartoon:
* A California paper, the Daily Press in Victorville, became one of the few to publish a Muhammad cartoon–the one with the prophet with a bomb in his turban–today, with its editor in a column knocking The Associated Press for refusing to distribute the images. Another small paper in Cheyenne, Wyoming, also published two of the cartoons, and also complained about the AP stance.
* Eric Mink, commentary editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, explains in a column today: “If a government controls what can and cannot be distributed, it’s called censorship. If a media outlet decides for itself what to include and exclude from its products — whether for journalistic or economic reasons, out of respect for possible sensitivities of some readers or concern about possible impact on its community — it’s called editorial judgment.
“Here in the United States, at least two major newspapers in the last week — the Austin American-Statesman and The Philadelphia Inquirer — chose to publish one of the original Danish cartoons to illustrate stories about the controversy and violence. Other papers, including the Post-Dispatch, have decided that the images aren’t necessary to communicate the story. It’s called judgment.”
The truth is, it’s not a particularly good cartoon. It’s only designed to upset Muslims, which it did. The Danish newspaper, which apparently has a history of these sorts of stunts, isn’t particularly heroic. If they were a poster on an Internet message board, they’d be considered a troll.
But the response to the cartoon is news. And to dance all around the thing that triggered the response is counter-intuitive and, in my opinion, shirking journalistic responsibility. As Don mentions in his editorial, this isn’t the first offensive image to run in a newspaper, because of its real or perceived news value. It likely won’t be the last. I think we will be poorer as a nation if our journalists refuse to cover news that makes them uncomfortable, even when it’s inarguably a real news story.
Geekgasm: Apple has posted Quicktime World of Warcraft trailers (including one for the Burning Crusade expansion) for use with the iPod Video.
(Mmmm, links.)
Oh, the fleeting nature of celebrity. One moment, you’re standing before television cameras in Baghdad, insisting that US forces are not, in fact, entering the city, the next, you’re a Trivial Pursuit answer.
Fortunately, one site remembers Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, also known to some as Baghdad Bob.
In addition to letting us know what he’s up to (no new news since the capture of Saddam and Bob going to work for Al-Jazeera), we have a great record of classic quotes, including “God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis.”
I have to admire a quote machine like him.
“I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad.”
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