Chicago Trib Board should throw book and more at CEO Daniels

 

David Carr and Michael Arrango report in today’s New York Times  that   the  board of directors of the Tribune Company is about to ask for the resignation of Randy Michaels, the controversial chief executive of the company–a move, in my view, that is long LONG overdue. Here’s why:

I couldn’t decide whether to cry or puke when I read David Carr’s Oct. 6 article on the situation at the Times Mirror Corporation since real  estate magnate Sam Zell purchased it for $8.2 B in 2007. Not only has the company filed for bankruptcy, slashed resources at the Tribune newspapers and television stations and let go more than 4200 employees–but it has fostered a culture hostile to women–and to journalism’s truth seeking role in the marketplace of ideas.

I interned Newsday (which was  a Times Mirror paper) in the mid-1970s where my first story, on the first women to enter the US Merchant Marine Corps, was changed to lead with the fact that the women succumbed to tears after being teased. I myself fielded a fair amount of sexist “humor” because, on the lifestyles beat, I covered women’s lib.

At Columbia Journalism School, a professor told me that women should not go into radio–because he didn’t “like the sound of their voices.”

Later, in another prestigious news outlet, I experienced sexual harrassment and pay discrimination.

Just as I was completing a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard,  a bigwig at a  TV network said not to bother applying for a job– referencing a need for “blondes with big bazooms” and a PBS producer wanted, for some reason, to discuss women drivers and menstruation.  At this point, I left TV news  to write and teach, hoping to help the next generation of women stand strong in/change the profession. 

 

That was almost 30 years ago. 

 

Today,  that TV program has a female executive producer and the network has hired some brunettes to cover wars, disasters, the White House–all sorts of major beats.   Women hold high office, serve on the Supreme Court, and  run  huge corporations.

Now a communications consultant, in my client work, I see male CEO’s struggling to share  childcare with  working wives and chastising 20-somethings for “unprofessional behavior” for making inappropriate jokes.  (True, I also see men “borrow” women’s scientific  findings without crediting them, refuse to promote female colleagues who refuse their advances,  and denigrate/sabotage women’s successes—but at least today men know that is wrong).

In his piece, Carr reports that Randy Michaels, a former radio executive and disc jockey, was ” handpicked”  by Sam Zell, the Times Mirror’s new controlling shareholder,  to run much of the media company’s vast collection of properties, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, WGN America and The Chicago Cubs”.

After Mr. Michaels arrived, Carr writes, according to two people at the bar one night, “he sat down and said, ‘watch this,’” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts. “ Carr learned from interviews with more than 20  past and current Chicago Tribune employees, that “Mr. Michaels’ and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, [once]the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk.”

 

 

What is more, Carr points out, the company’s employee manual encourages such an atmosphere.  “’Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use…,'” it reads. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process.’ It then added, ‘This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.’”

As I wrote in a letter to the New York Times,

 

OPINION | October 13, 2010
Letter:  The Troubled Tribune
I’m appalled and saddened by the irresponsible attitudes and actions of those now in command of a once respected, trustworthy pillar of the fourth estate.  Even if (especially if?) those in charge care more about making money than fulfilling their privileged societal watchdog role they must be subject to the same laws prohibiting sexual discrimination and harassment as are all other businesses across the land.

Anita M. Harris, Cambridge, MA

Anita Harris, president of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA,  is the author of Broken Patterns: Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity (Wayne State University Press, 1995).  A former journalist, she has reported for Newsday and the MacNeil-Lehrer Report (now the Newshour), and has taught journalism at Harvard, Yale and Tufts Universities, and at Simmons College.

 

Self-publishing can empower authors, challenge traditional publishers

I’m hard at work on Ithaca Diaries–a book, vook, and/or nook about college in the 1960s.I’m debating whether to go via the traditional publishing route (agent, publisher, an advance that will amount to about 2 cents an hour,  low royalties, do-it-yourself marketing, wait a year for it to come out)–or self-publish–which carries its own travails.

I’m interested to see that Amazon.com  is now offering self-published authors 75 percent of royalties on ebooks–compared with the measly 5 per cent I received for my first book, Broken Patterns–which came out in 1995 and for which I’m still paying back the $2000 advance. ( BTW–it’s now selling for 9 cents a copy on Amazon–plus postage; I now have the rights and will plan to offer a new edition later this year).

 I also note that Kindles are now being sold at Target for $279… though you can buy quite a few “real books” for that price,  pass them along to others,  and not worry that they’ll become useless as technology changes. 

Today’s Wall Street Journal   does a terrific job of exploring the ins and outs of self-publishing–and includes links to other excellent information.  

According to  Goffrey A. Fowler  and  Jeffrey A. Tractenberg:

 Much as blogs have bitten into the news business and YouTube has challenged television, digital self-publishing is creating a powerful new niche in books that’s threatening the traditional industry. Once derided as “vanity” titles by the publishing establishment, self-published books suddenly are able to thrive by circumventing the establishment. 

Here’s a link to the article:    Vanity Press Goes Digital 

–Anita M. Harris
HarrisCom Blog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish the New Cambridge Observer and Ithaca Diaries blogs.

Boston health journalists have little use for social media

Much enjoyed hearing members of the Boston health care press  admit (boast?) that they have almost zero use for social media.

Speaking on a panel at last week’s meeting of the Publicity Club of the New England,   journalists from the  Boston Business Journal (BBJ), Dow Jones Newswires, the Boston Herald and WBZ-TV) said they don’t “get”  Twitter--don’t have time for it, and can’t  see why anyone would want to use  it.

Jon Kamp, who covers medical technology and energy for Dow Jones said, “I’m 35 going on 100. I don’t get it; I don’t know what to do with it. When I’m 100, I hope I’ll be saying the same thing.”

Brad Perriello, executive editor  the year-old MassDevice.com,  an online business journal covering the device industry,  said he mainly posts  news feeds to attract readers to the publication’s Web site.

Ryan McBride,  a correspondent for Xconomy, a national online publication with bureaus in Boston, Seattle and San Diego,  said he follows certain industry leaders on Twitter but rarely contributes, himself.

Several said they have linked-in accounts that they barely use and and none use Facebook professionally.

” Facebook is to show people pictures of my kid,” Kamp said.

McBride described Linked-in as “an online Rolodex that’s full of people I don’t talk to much. Facebook is friends and family and all the people in high school whom I didn’t know were my friends.”

Julie Donnelly of the BBJ can’t see the point of posting on Facebook.  “I’m not that interesting,” she said.

Debbie Kim of  WBZ-TV  said she doesn’t have time  and Christine McConville of the Herald, said that, as an investigative reporter, she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to make public the details of her life.  Plus,  “I can barely return my emails, get enough exercise, see my friends.   I certainly don’t have time for [Facebook]. ”

She does, however, enjoy contributing to videos that appear online every three weeks or so.

The conversation was moderated by Michal Regunberg, vice president of Solomon McCown & Co,  a Boston public relations firm.  Regunberg’s questions focused on the ways in which cutbacks and other changes in the media are  affecting coverage.

All of the journalists agreed that the national debate over health reform has been the focus of their coverage in recent months (and that they’re tired of it).

All said they are working with less time, fewer resources and greater demands to produce more.  As a result, they have less time for research or feature writing.

McConville said she must write two stories  a day for the Herald. McBride covers two different beats for Xconomy. Donnelly writes for both the Boston Business Journal and Mass High Tech and is responsible for breaking stories on line as well as in print.   Debbie Kim, medical producer for WBZ-TV, must sometimes produce as many as four pieces in a single a day.

Kamp  mentioned that in the past, Dow Jones’ headquarters was relegated to offices in New Jersey but now shares the New York City newsroom of the Wall Street Journal–and that, in many newsrooms, there is tension over which stories should be posted online immediately and which should be  held for the print version of the paper.

All of the above means that anyone trying to get coverage faces huge competition for reporters attention and must provide information that is extremely clear and to the point, the journalists agreed.

The discussion  made me glad to be out of the pressure cooker journalism has increasingly become–but happy to see  a high level of competence, dedication and concern for truth in the Boston press corps.

——-Anita M. Harris

HarrisComBlog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer and Ithaca Diaries Blog.

Vooks

I read with interest Motoko Rich’s September 30 2009 New York Times article on Vooks–a hybrid “literary” form  “mashing together text, Web and  video features. ” 

She describes publisher Simon and Schuster’s  release of fitness and diet and beauty books that include videos on how to perform exercises or make skin lotion. Also,  Anthony Zuicker’s novel “Level 26, Dark Origins, published on paper, as an e-book and in audio, with a Web component that allows readers to watch brief videos adding to the plot.   

The online comments–101  of them–range mainly from skeptical to negative.

 John in New York writes, “Should we still call them books?” 

Val in Baltimore suggests we’ll soon see “A nobel prize…in viterature!” 

Mary the Trainer from Texas writes that the best part of  “reading a novel is creating the scenes in one’s mind based upon what the author has written.” 

 According to  R Weber   in Park Slope,  “Publishers –– all corporate hacks these days, with quotas to meet, bearing little resemble to publishers of old who thrived some years, got by in lean years –– have so little imagination & entrepreneurial drive, that idiocies like this are the best they can come up with. The truism proves true once more, “Pay peanuts, get monkeys.”

And  from CJ Messinger in California:  “The New York Times may be comfortable introducing this kind of technology to readers since print media is in decline. I for one am not yet ready to kiss books goodbye.”

I scrolled through pages of comments  in hopes of weighing in–but found that the comment box had closed. 

What I would have said is that as an author, former radio and television producer, photographer, and musician,  I’m thrilled and energized by the prospect of being able to merge media in order to give readers/viewers a fuller experience than is available through any single medium on its own.

 In research Ithaca Diaries,  a book (or something) based on journals I kept in college in the late 1960s, I was delighted to be able to check my fading memories using video, photos and news accounts  I  readily found on line.  I’ve been struggling to pull my  journal entries, letters, photographs and drawings into a linear form–but now it will be possible to include video of the Doors from 1969, Bob Dylan’s 1969 concert on the Isle of Wight; old news footage of the Chicago and Democratic News Conventions, maybe even the shootings at Kent State.   Maybe I can even read from the diary entries, aloud–and share tapes of  my old professors and friends.

Now all I need to do is figure out how to do this and  how to find the time, what it will cost–and whether–and how–it will sell.

I’d welcome YOUR comments.

—Anita Harris

HarrisComblog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer

How to write a winning blog for SEO

At the September  meeting of the Cambridge Search Engine Optimization Meetup Group Chris Baggot of  Compendium Blogware, advised a tech savvy group of 72 that key words and multiple pages are crucial to winning high blog rankings on search engines like Google and Bing.  

Group members interrupted Baggot  numerous times with questions. (They didn’t want to believe that Compendium’s platform, which focuses on providing many pages, each with its own keywords, could work better than WordPress). But Baggot held his own. 

Key takeaways:

• Eighty  percent of activity on the Web is search–by people who are looking for solutions to particular problems– using keywords.
• Bing, and, now, Google, are increasingly using content, as opposed to links, in ranking the importance of particular posts. 
• Domain names don’t matter: blog titles, and keywords do
• Have as many focused blog pages as possible–hundreds, if you can, each with its own main keyword
• For consultants: tell stories of problems you have solved
• Search engines “like” frequency and fresh pages; write short but often
• Blogs should be 100-150words; if you have to more say, write another post
• Include a call to action–give people a way to go forward: have an offer; ask them to sign up for something

Ohmygosh I’m over 150  words!

Here’s my call to action:  Contact me  at harriscom@harriscom.com if you need communications strategy,   media outreach, Web structure and content, a WordPress blog or writing for any medium about almost anything.

–Anita M. Harris

Harriscomblog  is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.   We also publish the New Cambridge Observer. Copyright:  anita m. harris, 2009