October 2009 Archives

(Note: The following are notes made for remarks at Thursday's conference at Shorenstein on "How to Make Money in News." I spoke briefly about foundation-funded journalism and made a special note about the emerging non-news organizations.)

I’m going to talk briefly about another of the missions of Geoff Cowan's center (the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy) and of USC Annenberg and that is  the nonprofit new-media sector, including operations financed by foundations and other philanthropy.  I also want to mention an emerging model that’s worth watching: the non-news organizations.

These days none of us can avoid seeing how fast foundation-funded journalism is growing:  Just in the last week there have been grant announcements from MacArthur for the Chicago News Co-Op; from the Bullitt Foundation for InvestigateWest; and, this announcement that made us would-be grantees perk up, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for Crosscut Seattle.  (Later note: Bob Giles added the Hechinger Institute's new role in education reporting.)

5:00 - 6:30 p.m. Annenberg East Lobby.

NEW YORK -- Look, up in the sky! It’s a balloon!

No, it’s not Falcom Heene floating over Colorado (or not, as it turned out). It’s Terry Jimenez, floating over Long Island!

Who???

Dear readers, meet Terry Jimenez, hero to newspaper publishers and scourge of free content on the Internet. What, you’ve never heard of him? Those of you without the Terry Jimenez poster can write to the Newspaper Association of America. Think of the iconic Farrah Fawcett poster, but with presses rolling. Really.

No, just kidding (I think).

Russ Stanton is one of my favorite people. Imagine the stereotype of a reserved, slightly stuffy big-city editor and that's not Russ.The editor of the Los Angeles Times for the last 20 months, Stanton is uncommonly down to earth and available. But the main reason I like him is his public honesty. Stanton's default response is to tell the truth -- something that doesn't come easily to most executives struggling to keep their enterprise alive. Asked earlier this year how many news staffers could be sustained if the Times went Web only, Stanton could have been forgiven for taking a pass. He didn't. The answer, he said, was 150.

So when Stanton visited our USC Annenberg graduate class last night, "Entrepreneurship in the New Media," I believed him when he said he's bullish about prospects for the Los Angeles Times, even as it sits in Chapter 11 with huge questions looming about its future.

I have just returned from the Los Angeles launch of A Woman's Nation --an ambitious project and a unique report on the status of American women which includes an essay I co authored with Stacy Smith, Ph.D. and Amy Granados "Sexy Socialization: Today’s Media and the Next Generation of Women”.  

The Womans Nation initiative is produced by California First Lady Maria Shriver with partners including the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the CCLP and the multifaceted report --including a comprehensive national poll-- is known as, The Shriver Report.

Fellows from the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy have authored an essay in a report released October 15 by award-winning broadcast journalist and author Maria Shriver. Shriver is working in partnership with CCLP and the Center for American Progress on an ambitious research project examining how women's changing roles are affecting government, businesses, faith communities and the media.

Findings are being released in The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything. It “outlines how these institutions rely on outdated models of who works and who cares for our families, and examines how all these parts of the culture have responded to one of the greatest social transformations of our time.”

The Shriver Report features the essay Sexy Socialization: Today’s media and the next generation of women, authored by Cinny Kennard (pictured, right), CCLP senior fellow and an award-winning journalist and media executive, Stacy Smith, Ph.D. (pictured, left), CCLP faculty fellow and an award winning scholar and author, and Amy Granados, CCLP research fellow and USC Annenberg doctoral student.

Geoffrey Cowan, University Professor, Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership, and Director of the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy at the University of Southern California, is being inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 229th class of new fellows in Boston on Saturday, October 10. The program "celebrates pioneering research and scholarship, artistic achievement, and exemplary service to society."

For the first time since 1980, the Federal Trade Commission amended its regulations to ensure celebrities or anyone promoting a product online fully disclose the results a consumer can expect to find. If violated, bloggers face an $11,000 fine per infraction. Read the PaidContent.org post. -- October 5, 2009.

A new study by the Pew Research Center shows that journalists largely missed the story on the financial hardships of ordinary people during the economic crisis that began last fall. The media content analysis also showed that when the stock market rebounded, news coverage notably subsided. Read the New York Times article. -- October 5, 2009.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The latest evidence of financial viability of microlocal news comes from an article in the Wall Street Journal describing the Register-Star, a successful newspaper in Hudson, a town in Columbia County, New York.

The formula is a familiar one: “a rich diet of local politics, education news, crime, school sports and people stories.”

In partnership with the USC Thornton School of Music and the USC Marshall School of Business, USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership & Policy presents a concert and conversation with Grammy Award-winning musician Peter Buffett.  He has released 15 records and scored the memorable "Fire Dance" scene in the Oscar-winning film Dances With Wolves. He also composed the full score for 500 Nations, the eight-hour Emmy Award-winning CBS miniseries Costner produced. He is the son of legendary investor Warren Buffett and as part of his performance, he intersperses his songs with personal anecdotes and offers candid look into “his upbringing, the lessons he's learned, and their role in the development of the man he's become.” Reception follows discussion. RSVP requested. To RSVP, click here.

5:00 p.m. Ramo Recital Hall, USC Thornton School of Music.

Join Geoffrey Cowan, USC University Professor and director of the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy for a discussion on current events, including media coverage of the debate on health care reform and the history and future of the Los Angeles Times. Special guests include veteran editor and author Bill Boyarsky, author of the new book Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times and communication professor and author Tom Hollihan, author of Uncivil Wars: Political Campaigns in a Media Age. Book signing follows discussion. Lunch will be served. RSVP requested. To RSVP, click here.

12 noon. Annenberg Research Park's Kerckhoff Hall, 734 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles, CA.

Join David Westphal, CCLP senior fellow and USC Annenberg executive in residence, Geoffrey Cowan, USC University Professor and director of the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy and Varun Soni, USC Dean of Religious Life, for a discussion on media, politics and religion. Special guest: Peter Steinfels, “Beliefs” columnist for the New York Times and co-director of the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture. His topic: “A Catholic Approach to American Public Life.” He writes “A review of different understandings of secularization suggests that the U.S., in fact, can be called a ‘post-secular’ society, preeminently and irreversibly secular in some respects, intensely religious in others.  But what does this in turn mean for American public life and specifically for its politics?  How should religious traditions, organizations, and leaders speak to questions with profound moral implications, from war and economic security to health care and abortion. Should they be politically “bilingual”—addressing the faithful with one language and the general citizenry with another? What is needed is a new ethic of “post-secular citizenship” involving both religious literacy and enlarged sensibilities on the part of believers and non-believers.”  He is the author of A People Adrift : The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America. Book signing follows discussion. This program is co-sponsored by the USC Office of Religious Life, USC Annenberg’s Knight Chair in Media and Religion and USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture. Lunch will be served. RSVP requested. To RSVP, click here.

12 noon. Annenberg Research Park's Kerckhoff Hall, 734 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles, CA.

“If a concert happens and no one writes about it, did it really happen?” asked Doug McLennan, co-director of the National Summit on Arts Journalism (NSAJ), a gathering co-sponsored by the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy (CCLP) at the USC Annenberg School for Communication.  With over half of the nation's arts journalists unemployed, the summit explored the future of arts journalism by presenting ten innovative projects and two conversations about the evolving art and reinventing business of arts journalism.

“Our aim here is not to tell you what’s next for arts journalism, but to raise questions, highlight issues and provoke the vigorous discussion we need to have as arts journalism evolves,” CCLP faculty fellow and NSAJ co-director, Sasha Anawalt stated in her opening remarks.