The decline in print and newspapers accelerates, Facebook helps a bike rider chase down a homeless man who stole it, and just what is it about CBD oil that makes people believe it is a miracle cure all?

Monday May 6, 2019

 Welcome to Bakersfield Observed. Our mission is to celebrate life in Kern County by focusing on newsmakers and events and the local characters who make this such a special to live. Send your tips to rsbeene@yahoo.com.

 * ... RIP PRINT: It's not exactly news that newspapers are in trouble, but the rate at which they are going out of business might surprise you. According to The Wall Street Journal, local papers have suffered sharper declines in circulation and (more importantly) advertising than the few more successful national models like The New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Nearly 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004 and 2018, "leaving 200 counties with no newspaper and roughly half the counties in the country with one one." One expert, Harvard's Nicco Male, said it more bluntly: "It's hard to see a future where newspapers persist," he said, adding that half of the

surviving papers will be gone within two years.

 * ... STOLEN BIKE: With homelessness and theft on the rise, it is no surprise that bicycles are disappearing across town. But once in a while, as in the case of Peter Wolleson, the good guys win. After Wolleson's beloved Specialized cross bike was stolen out of his car a short time back, he took to Facebook to post pictures hoping someone would see it on the street. And lo and behold, someone did. Said Wolleson:  "Thursday afternoon a friend and fellow cyclist contacted me and asked me to send him a photo of my bike. I assumed that he was going to post it to his Facebook or something in an effort to help me find the bike. He texted right back to tell me that he had just seen a homeless person riding my bike near California and Oak Street. He couldn’t give me a very clear location but said that he appeared to be headed toward a homeless camp behind the motels that back up against the freeway." Wolleson drove over there, and after some searching happened on a homeless encampment where he found his bike, battered but basically okay. "Sure enough, as I approached the shelter I saw my bike lying in the dirt under a cover! I started recording video in case the police needed evidence for my homicide investigation (I had no idea how many people might be in there). As I grabbed the bike, a homeless guy crawled out of the shelter and tried to resist. I indicated to the gentleman that I was there to reacquire my bike, and that if he’d like to debate the matter, I would gladly contact the local authorities to act as mediator. He indicated that this would not be necessary. As he continued to exit his residence, I suggested that he remain at his current location for his own comfort and safety." The wheels are trashed and other items were missing, but I count this as a win for the good guys.

 * ... SPOTTED ON TWITTER: "Once you get past my charm, good looks, intelligence and my sense of humor, I think it’s my modesty that stands out."

 * ... CBD OIL: An woman in her 80s with such severe arthritis she can barely use her hands swears that CBD oil has virtually restored her health. A young man with a psoriasis-like skin condition says it  is the only ointment that has cleared his skin. And yet another adults uses CBD oil battle debilitating headaches. Extracted from hemp but without the active "stoner" ingredient in marijuana, CBD oil has taken the nation by storm. But there are few official studies of it and most testimonials have been anecdotal. So where is the truth. On Wednesday I will sit down with CBD experts on The Richard Beene Show at 1:30 p.m.  (KERN NewsTalk 96.1 FM) to get to the truth. Tune in. This should be educational.

 * ... MEMORIES: And check out this old postcard of the oilfields.

When passion alone isn't enough: a lesson of survival when your business is turned on its head

Picked up this hilarious video off The Daily Show website on the challenges facing newspapers, in this case The New York Times. There are few bigger fans of the NY Times than me, yet I couldn't help be surprised at the tone of the Times managers. Don't know if it was smugness or self importance, but these guys came across as virtually clueless as to what is happening around them. I'm sure they are passionate about what they do, but passion alone is not enough in itself. And that's one of the problems with the mass media these days. Reporters and editors revel in their passion for the business and believe that this passion for their craft should be enough to save their jobs. After all, isn't what they do important? And if it's important to them, shouldn't society value it? But passion alone entitles you to absolutely nothing. It doesn't solve changing reader habits and interests and it certainly doesn't address the revenue issues. The problem is this: passion can mask the real problems facing an industry, and simply being passionate about it falls well short of becoming part of the solution.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
End Times
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

A doctor may be passionate about medicine and helping people, but if he doesn't hire people to deal with the insurance companies, she'll soon be out of business. A documentary film maker may be passionate about her subject, but if she doesn't find someone to market and help fund it, no one will never see it. I'm sure the GM workers were passionate about making cars in Michigan, but if no one is buying Pontiacs, what value is that passion? Likewise, reporters and editors talk about their passion for their business, but it's a passion as only they choose to selectively define it. Passion is only valuable if it comes with the ability to change and accept that everything you may do tomorrow may be different. To be part of the solution, and not to simply whine that things have changed and the rules have changed. Unions love to cling to their "rules," but many times these rules have been rendered obsolete by the market. So simply clinging to the work as you define it may reflect your passion, but it's a recipe for eventually being out of work. I'd trade a pound of passion for an ounce of flexibility and problem solving in a minute.

When the tribe holds onto the past, often it just takes one uninhibited dancer to trigger change

Came across this video from the Sasquatch music festival on Seth Godin's blog (see his blog here). It struck me that in times of stress and traumatic change, organizations often become paralyzed by fear of the unknown even when they know they simply must change to survive. This is particularly true in the mass media business (newspapers, radio, TV, magazines) which are undergoing a seismic upheaval that calls for a total rethinking of our roles. And yet, even when presented with overwhelming evidence, we tend to hold onto the past because it it familiar, and comfortable. The tribal instincts of organizations are strong, and few want go to against the "us not change" mentality of the herd. And yet, as in this video, often is only takes one or two people to initiate and embrace change. From Seth's blog:

"My favorite part happens just before the first minute mark. That's when guy #3 joins the group. Before him, it was just a crazy dancing guy and then maybe one other crazy guy. But it's guy #3 who made it a movement.
Initiators are rare indeed, but it's scary to be the leader. Guy #3 is rare too, but it's a lot less scary and just as important. Guy #49 is irrelevant. No bravery points for being part of the mob.
"We need more guy #3s.

The journalism bubble: why the newsroom and reporting will never be the same

Came across a thought provoking piece on the state of journalism today, penned by none other than Jeff Jarvis, the prolific and insightful media blogger who is constantly challenging the "mainstream media" to change or risk total irrelevance. (see the entire take on Jarvis' blog here) Jarvis argues - and I agree here - that old media is dying because most mainstream journalists spend their time "churning commodity news" that is of little value to readers. Journalists hate this of course, because most have an "inflated" view of themselves and their work. From Jeff's blog, quoting another blogger Robert Picard:

"Well-paying employment requires that workers possess unique skills, abilities, and knowledge. It also requires that the labor must be non-commoditized. Unfortunately, journalistic labor has become commoditized. Most journalists share the same skills sets and the same approaches to stories, seek out the same sources, ask similar questions, and produce relatively similar stories….

Across the news industry, processes and procedures for news gathering are guided by standardized news values, producing standardized stories in standardized formats that are presented in standardized styles. The result is extraordinary sameness and minimal differentiation."



Well said. Here's my take on this: back in the day, when advertisers and readers had fewer options, it was okay to churn out endless streams of agenda-driven city council or government stories, or soft features, because readers had no choice. Or it was okay to view the world - and write stories - about what interested you because you (the reporter) thought it was important. No one paid attention to marketing or reader interests because you didn't need to. You got paid and rewarded anyway. And, the process dictated sameness. But now the market demands expertise, impact and content targeted at specific interests. Journalists hate this because it diminishes what they do, what they find interesting, but readers have already voted - by going to sources where they find value. Some of this stuff is simple: when dad eats his son's eyes out in a drug crazed stupor, that's news. Burying it inside because you don't want to sensationalize it and then running commodity wire copy on the front - when reader interest dictates otherwise - is simply suicidal. Short of that, a city council "advance" story written just to fill the pages is also commodity drivel that has little or no value. Just because you cover city government and know people, and you have an interest in it, doesn't mean it's interesting or has value to anyone else. More from Jeff:

"People — particularly if they’re under 40 — have news priorities other than those of the editors of The New York Times or producers of the “NBC Nightly News.” A new tablet from Apple — or last night’s episode of “Gossip Girl” or the adventures of the hipster grifter — is a bigger deal than the latest petty scandal in Albany. You think that’s a damning indictment of modern society and a recipe for idiocracy? Fine. Start a nonprofit to cover all the local-government news you think a healthy society needs. But don’t expect advertisers — or commercially-minded publishers or readers, for that matter — to share your interests. . . .

"When Gawker started, there was a surfeit of information and not nearly enough context — so we provided that, in the form of links and occasionally snarky commentary. But now the balance has shifted. There are pointers to articles on the blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Digg. And all these intermediaries are looking for something to link to. If a good exclusive used to provide 10 times the traffic of a standard regurgitated blog post, now it garners a hundred times as much. That should be reassuring to people. The content market is finding its new balance. Original
reporting will be rewarded.

So where does that leave old school journalists? Some tips:
* Get over thinking that the work you do is important. It is only important if the marketplace values it.
* Stop writing for what interests you and write for your readers.
* Ask yourself: how well do I really know my market and my readers?
* Please, no more hiding behind "awards" from your local or state press clubs. These are given out by your peer groups that often have little relevance to readership or impact.
* The old days of writing "DBI" stories (dull but important) are over. If it's really important, it won't be dull. Dull and sameness equate to death.
* Recognize there will be fewer of you and you will have to become more specialized. And that doesn't mean you "specialize" in city government because you like it but rather you specialize in finding content that has real value to your readers. Your work must have impact.
* And lastly, accept the change or find other work.

Downsizing and getting the finger in a bad economy

It was a long day at The Californian today where we experienced our second round of layoffs in the past four months. It’s a given that the economy is bad, and news of layoffs are almost commonplace these days. Consultants tell us to call it a “reduction in force,” but it’s a layoff to those who leave the building with a cardboard box holding their personal belongings. They are disruptive and painful, but a necessary tool for companies that confront the simple fact that when expenses exceed revenue, you lose money. Mature industries, like newspapers, are particularly vulnerable in this economy. The real culprit is not people abandoning us for the internet, but rather a heavy fisted economy that has our advertisers reeling. Newspapers have always been an economic barometer of sorts: when people stop buying cars and new homes and shopping at Home Depot to spruce up the nest, advertisers curtail their spending and we have a bad day. If Realtors get a cold, we get the flu. None of this of course is any comfort to the people who lose their jobs, who often have families and mortgages and bills to pay. And I can’t really blame the former employee who spotted me on the street today and gave me the angry finger. So going forward? I spotted this bit of advice on a media blog and thought it relevant:

“The first step in managing uncertainty is to admit its influence. In the context of business, particularly in a mature industry, this means preparing for a wide range of outcomes, including the very real possibility that revenue will shrink, not grow. Chaos can be traumatic for the unimaginative, but abandoning the center of gravity can be a lifesaver.”

When organizations fossilize, they die

Thanks to colleague Chuck Peters for passing along a wonderful blog about why change is so important to keep organizations vibrant and alive. It couldn't be more relevant to newspapers where staffs struggle with the smallest inkling of change. The following excerpt comes from the blog "the brand builder" and notes the fragilty of ideas, and the need to keep experimenting and changing.

“I have never stabilized an organization. Crystallizing an organization is freezing the energy. In chemistry, instability is very good because it creates some combinations you don’t expect.”

“Without change, there is fossilization,and that’s the worst thing that can happen.”

“Ideas,are so fragile, so tenuous, that managers must destroy layers that can obscure or damage them. If you have an organization that is too administrative, you are just killing the ideas. As we say in France, when you ask a committee to draw a horse, you get a camel.”

Following the Obama inauguration on Twitter, Facebook and text messaging

I nestled in to watch the inauguration from my vacation spot on the Georgia coast but did so with the help of some special correspondents. An old colleague was on the mall in Washington sending me updates on Twitter, another friend who works at National Public Radio (Tony Marcano) was there sending me photos via Facebook (that's his picture with this story) and a third (Supervisor Michael Rubio) was filling me in via text message on my phone. All of which added additional elements of color and drama that made the moment much more than a one dimensional interface with my TV. Newspapers and their websites need to find ways to capture and embrace this kind of technology less they become even more irrelevant as a forum that provides "yesterday's news today."

Enough thumb sucking: time to reinvent newspapers

Mark Potts posts some intriguing questions on his blog the Recovering Journalist about how some folks in the newspaper industry are still resisting the inevitable change. Mark is right: the thumb suckers among us have to get over it and move on. We're going to survive, but the newspaper as we know it will go away. He writes:

"In other words, there's no natural law that says the traditional newspaper business model - hire large staff, report news, sell ads, crush trees, smear ink on them, throw on doorsteps, collect some circulation revenue, reap 20 percent-plus profit margins - is inviolate. Unfortunately the reality may be that it's not the Web news business model that is broken-it's the print business model that's screwy."

Potts is right but I'd add there remains a good future for a blended print-digital product, albeit on a different economic scale. The print product of the future will be smaller and cater to a finite but influential group of "loyal" readers, no longer a one-size-fits-all product. That might mean no more TV grids, comics and fluff but a more serious and indepth magazine-style product that speaks to a more affluent and engaged audience. And that could be fun even if it's a smaller version of its former self.

An idea for real, indepth education coverage

If local newspapers are truly going to move from mass to niche, and that means serving a better educated and more engaged audience, they're going to have to find a way to deliver the goods. And that means fewer stories about drivebys, fires and agenda-driven government news and more in-depth stuff that a reader believes "makes me smarter." Think the Economist as your local newspaper. Okay, it's a dream now but it should be our goal. One way to bring top notch reporting back to newspapers is being raised by Richard Lee Colvin, director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and Media at Columbia University's Teachers College. Colvin is a former education reporter at the Los Angeles Times, a dogged specialist who took his craft seriously and produced some stellar work. It's just an idea but he's considering a plan where Hechinger would produce the stories in partnership with local newspapers, bringing some much-needed depth to the resource-starved paper at (hopefully) a reasonable price. If we're going to survive, we're going to have to determine how to evolve from a product that simply serves up crime and courts and soft features to one that gives our readers something special. Stay tuned for more from Colvin and Hechinger.

The new journalism: why "context" matters and "mirroring" does not

I stumbled upon a provocative blog on the future of reporting and journalism at Newsless.org. Written by Matt Thomspon, a research fellow at the Missouri school of journalism, it effectively argues that "context" is what's important, not simply "mirroring the community" (my words, not his) by reporting the latest driveby or what happened at the courthouse. This is important stuff because I believe it speaks to the increasing irrelevance of what comes out of newsrooms today. Too many reporters and editors don't have a clue who their core readers are, and they hide behind their own narrow definition of "news" as something that simply happened. From the Newless.org blog:

Until recently, newspaper editors defined news as “important developments over the past 24 hours.” Editors of newsmagazines might expand that time horizon by a few days; Web editors will contract it to within a few hours. But there’s no escaping the time-bounded nature of “news.”

My understanding of journalism is broader. To me, journalism is the constant effort to deliver a truer picture of the world as it is. The “latest developments” provide one lens through which to capture that picture. And as long as journalism was primarily delivered by static media, that lens made perfect sense.

Surprise: Internet top news source for young people

It should come as no surprise that the internet is now the preferred source for news for young people. The only surprise is it took this long. Alan Mutter's Newsosaur blog (link is below) triggered a sharp exchange of what this means for traditional media. What is clear to me is that "old media" (and that includes newspapers) has to change the way it views the world and open itself up to more user generated content. The newsroom does a splendid job of building high walls to keep non traditional news sources out of the paper; now it's going to have to learn to let people in. Consider this comment from Mutter's blog:

Once newspapers go broke, they won't be a source for the Internet anymore. But I can think of several good sources right off the bat:

(1) Media releases and other information provided by corporations, institutions, political parties and lobby groups. Of course, this will be biased, but no more so than the existing media. As it is, much 'journalism' consists of transcribing these sources anyway.

(2) Citizen reporting. With mobile phones becoming ubiquitous, capable of taking photos and even sending video streams in real time, it is increasingly likely that someone will be present at a breaking news event, recording it on the spot.

(3) Interested amateurs -- bloggers with a day job who are enthusiastic enough to pursue a story and analyse the details. We have quite a few good ones already.

A New World Order

Jeff Jarvis (a link to his buzzmachine is listed below) is one of our great thinkers and today he puts forth a good argument linking the current economic upheaval with the maturation of the internet. I lifted this straight from his blog:

Fred Wilson says what I’ve been thinking: That we’re in more than a financial crisis, we’re in a fundamental restructuring.

Clearly the economic downturn is the direct cause of most of these failures but I believe it is the straw that broke the camel’s back in most cases.

The internet, now closing in on 15 years old in its mainstream incarnation as the world wide web, is in many cases the underlying cause of these business failures.

Bits of information flowing over a wire (or through the air) are just more efficient than physical infrastructure….

This downturn will be marked in history as the time where many of the business models built in the industrial era finally collapsed as a result of being undermined by the information age.

Fred outlines fundamental changes in retail, banking, and auto sales, to name three industries, and then is kind enough to plug my book for more.

I also argued in a recent Guardian column that not only will specific industries be overtaken by this change but so will the structure of the economy as - post-crisis, post-Google - companies and sectors will no longer grow to critical mass through vast ownership funded by vast debt but instead, Google-like, by building networks atop platforms. Industries will change and so will the structure in which they operate.

The point in any case is that it would be a mistake to think that we will come out of this financial crisis soon wounded but still seeing the world the way we saw it before. In the graveyard of camels with broken backs, we will see a new world newly structured and we’re only beginning to figure it out.

In this sense, media - music, newspapers, TV, magazines, books - may be lucky to be among the first to undergo this radical restructuring. Communications was also early on because it - like media - appeared close to the internet and Google (though, as I say in the post below, it’s a mistake to see the internet strictly as media or as pipes; it’s something other). Other industries and institutions - advertising, manufacturing, health, education, government… - are next and they, like their predecessors, don’t see what’s coming, especially if they think all they’re undergoing is a crisis. The change is bigger, more fundamental, and more permanent than that.