Are headlights targeted communication?

by Roger Pynn

As a passionate First Amendment rights advocate, it is difficult to question almost any act of censorship … but a story of a recent court ruling in Central Florida sparked a letter to the editor in the Orlando Sentinel that really gives me pause.

Letter writer Reg Lyle wrote to question whether flashing your car headlights is free speech if your objective is to tell other drivers to slow down because there are police nearby.  Circuit Judge Alan Dickey had ruled that warning speeders of their potential to be stopped qualifies for the constitutional protection.

But Lyle suggests otherwise.  When targeted communication is intended to obstruct justice, whether in the form of a flash of the headlights or perhaps warning a terrorist that an undercover law enforcement officer has infiltrated their branch of al-Qaeda, should the communication be protected?  Is there any difference?  Is the First Amendment intended to get in the way of our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness … which law enforcement officers are paid to protect?

Lessons Left Behind

by Roger Pynn

I’ve been through a series of losses recently, and when dear friends and family members pass away I guess it is unavoidable that we become reflective and introspective.  Perhaps it is also something that comes with age, but at a number of these funerals and memorial services I’ve been struck by the lessons those we mourned and honored left behind.

One loss that hit very hard was that of a dear friend and client, Gary Sain … a giant in the tourism and hospitality industry.  As I listened to those who had come to praise him, including corporate and community giants, I thought of all the times he had said to me, “why not?”  Gary just refused to take “no” for an answer if he believed in something … and he always believed BIG.

I’m grateful to him for the reminder that just because others don’t understand isn’t reason to give up … it is a call to action to package your ideas and clarify and communicate them, but most importantly to do so in a positive way, never allowing yourself to get on the defensive.

And although I don’t know Jack Zenger, his blog post for Forbes about the value of communicating honestly came from something he experienced in one of the most unimaginable of all life situations … the loss of a child.  You should read this, not just because it is exceptionally well-written, but because in the midst of the horrifying loss of an adult son, he recognized lessons all of us can benefit from in the compassionate yet assertive words of a physician.

What I’ve been left with through these losses and the lessons is a realization that these people all seemed to know that sharing life lessons is an important responsibility … and that they didn’t wait to share them.  They shared them when they were alive and we celebrated them when they were gone.

What are you sharing?

Thank You, Perry Mason

by Roger Pynn

 

I wish the folks at the Poynter Institute would conduct a study of the leading institutional participants in social media.  The journalism community Poynter so devotedly serves has to be right up there near the top, yet articles like Adam Hochberg’s headlined “George Zimmerman’s lawyers hope to win trial by social media in Trayvon Martin case” really don’t seem to take that into account.

Hochberg’s article is well-done and interesting in its exploration of the use of social media by Zimmerman’s attorney Mark O’Mara, but it seems to draw some magical line between social media and the traditional media when in fact nearly every newspaper in America has linked itself inextricably to the social networks O’Mara is using to disseminate information, build support and possibly influence the jury pool, either intentionally or as collateral damage.

Attorneys learned long ago to use every possible tool at their disposal to convince the public that their case was right and their opponents were wrong.  Smart ones didn’t wait for media coverage, they instigated it.  They know (as one source tells Hochberg) that part of the attorney’s responsibility is to “protect their client’s reputation in the public eye.”

That would be a fun debate, but is there any difference here?  Social media is about targeted communication … taking advantage of tools that allow you to connect directly with people interested in your story.

The far more troubling issue for me is lack of media restraint when it comes to covering trials.  Clearly, both journalists and media marketers have discovered the depth of public fascination with trials (thank you, Perry Mason), but there seems very little concern for the role coverage may be playing in outcomes.

When will we ever learn?

by Roger Pynn

 

Like Pete Seeger’s 60s folk classic “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” television executives have to be wondering where all the viewers have gone … and why?  The story told by Nielsen Company’s just-released data showing continued decline in the number of American “TV households” may be as telling about our media habits as Seeger’s lyrics became to the story of the Vietnam-era, anti-war movement.

It is hard to visit a Costco, Best Buy, Sears or any other major retailer without seeing someone wheeling out the latest 50+-inch television set.  Come Super Bowl weekend, inventories seem to disappear as consumers try to outdo themselves from last year’s Super Bowl parties.

But Nielsen’s study shows that while the number of households has increased, they aren’t connected to the programming Nielsen monitors … content that comes from a cable, satellite or antenna connection.

It has been reported that this year the Consumer Electronics Association projected TV set sales would increase … but by just 2 million over 2011’s sales of 260 million.  Meanwhile, 2011 sales of tablet computers like the iPad rose 260 percent over 2010.

You can use those tablets and a slew of apps to connect whenever you like to almost all the programming that Nielsen reports on … and although an Internet connection is helpful, you don’t have to have access to watch your favorite programs.  At lunch one of my colleagues shared that she owns a DVD collection of every Seinfeld episode ever broadcast.

While the answer to Seeger’s question was simple … that “the girls have picked them every one” … he also asked “when will they ever learn?”—suggesting in his anti-war lyrics that man never learned from his mistakes.

We’ll likely be asking where all the television viewers went for a long, long time.  Broadcasters may well be asking “when will we ever learn?”

Escape app, please.

by Roger Pynn

 

 

Location-based technology is following me.  I can’t get away from it.  Now, even the news is following me.

Is it just me, or do we need an escape app?  I realize I can turn things off, but the urge to respond to every notification is driving me crazy.

And we wonder why people are texting while driving.

Two Sides to the “Today” Show Goof

NBC Hits the Trifecta

by Dan Ward

The New York Times on Sunday published a great story by David Carr regarding how NBC refuses to broadcast a correction to a major story despite hitting “the trifecta of being misleading, incendiary and dead-bang wrong.”

As many know by now, the “Today” show aired a story on March 22 about the Trayvon Martin case, in which tape of a 911 call from George Zimmerman was edited in such a way that it made it appear as though Zimmerman had made racist statements. (The unedited tape showed that Zimmerman was responding to direct questions from the 911 operator.)

NBC News did an investigation, fired the producer in charge and made a public apology. But as Carr points out, the one thing NBC did not do was correct the story in the same place where the error was made: the “Today” show.

Carr details the reasons why broadcast networks rarely if ever air corrections, and admits to being surprised when the president of NBC News agreed that it was wrong not to air a correction, saying “we probably should have done it on our own air.”

The question is whether “should” will ever become “will.”

So how about it, NBC? Will we ever hear Matt Lauer utter the words, “we goofed?”

Just the Facts

by Roger Pynn

If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there, does it still make a noise?

If you buy into the logic in New York Times media columnist David Carr’s Sunday column, the answer is either “no” or “maybe.”

Carr took NBC to task for failing to broadcast a correction about the bogus editing of 911 tapes from the Trayvon Martin killing on the “Today” show, where the outrageous edits were used.  He gives NBC a lot of credit for dealing quickly with the nightmarish incident that further fanned the flames in this case, but he in exasperation asks:

“What is it with television news and corrections?  When the rest of the journalism world gets something wrong, they generally correct themselves.  But network news acts as if an on-air admission of error might cause a meteor to land on the noggin of one of its precious talking heads.  NBC used all of the powers at its disposal to amend the mistake, except the high-visibility airtime where the bad clip ran in the first place.”

Carr goes on to say that at newspapers like the Times “corrections are usually not placed in highly visible news space, but they are consistent in where they appear, and readers can go there or not as they wish.”  Really?

Isn’t that to say that readers should turn to their paper’s corrections column every day to see whether anything they read was right or wrong?

I agree NBC should have made up for its mistake on “Today,” where it erred.  But I also think the Times and other papers need to live up to the same standard … not leave it up to concerned readers to serve as fact checkers.

Trial by TV?

by Roger Pynn

No … I’m not talking about whether George Zimmerman will get a fair trial in light of all the publicity surrounding him shooting Trayvon Martin.  Rather, I’m wondering if Central Florida will ever get over the image we get from these high-profile trials.  From Casey Anthony to Zimmerman, to viewers from around the world we must look like a strange planet.

This New York Times feature paints a scary picture of what we could be facing as media outlets begin jockeying for position to capture the public fascination with such trials.  Perhaps we could avoid all this by letting readers and viewers cast “guilty” or “innocent” votes on message boards after reading their favorite tabloid.

Kudos, Orlando Sentinel

by Roger Pynn

I’ve often referred to message boards at newspaper websites as “the sewer of the Internet” because they are often more a place for spewing anger (or even stupidity) than sharing insight or solutions, and my business partner Dan Ward has written here in the past about how newspapers are dealing with the challenges these channels present.

In Sunday’s Orlando Sentinel, Editor Mark Russell wrote a thoughtful column on the topic and shared the Sentinel’s latest efforts to capitalize on the popularity of this interactive component in the age of digital newspapering.  Said, Russell, “We’re committed to making our website a place where people can engage with each other and with the Sentinel.  Commenting is an important part of that.”

What stands out about the Sentinel policies is that multiple news employees are engaged in monitoring the participation on their message boards … not just one, as is the case at many papers.  And, rather than simply removing something deemed offensive, they actually engage the “offender” and work to build understanding in their online community.

There remain a lot of questions about the intersection of journalism and the commercial interests of companies that now are as driven by clicks as they were 30 years ago by coupon clipping, but Russell is right, this is an interactive, user-driven age.  Give them credit for a hands-on approach.

How does this happen?

by Roger Pynn

 

I’m old enough to remember Julie Newmar in her heyday, and I’m old enough to remember when newspaper copy editors made sure they didn’t run the same story two days in a row in exactly the same position … on page 2A.

I’m still trying to figure out how that happened in the Orlando Sentinel Sunday and Monday (April 15 & 16) when a feature about the gal who played perhaps the most memorable Catwoman ever was repeated verbatim.

With space at a premium these days, and readers of print editions bemoaning the withering size of their morning paper, you just have to wonder how that can happen.  And equally confusing is how you can’t even find the feature on the paper’s website.

 

Florida’s Best Newspaper

by Roger Pynn

All around us we see great newspapers biting the dust or changing hands for peanuts – latest example, the Philadelphia Inquirer scooped up by local business leaders at fire sale prices – or deciding (probably way too late in the game) to start charging online consumers the way they’ve continued charging print subscribers in hopes that at least one of their business models will survive.

Interestingly, my newspaper alma mater … the paper I grew up on and have been hoping to get old on, the Orlando Sentinel, has decided that because I’ve stayed the course and continued to subscribe, I won’t have to “become a member.”

I have a lot of buddies down at 633 North Orange Avenue and I pray they are making the right decision.  They are not alone and are headed down a new road astride some heavy hitters like the Boston Globe, their neighbor Florida Today and their sister paper the Los Angeles Times.

Frankly, I’ve believed they should have been charging for online consumption for a long time.  But I fear they’ve given it away for so long that now their online audience is the big prize and those fickle digital readers may just choose to go elsewhere.  Unfortunately the handwriting may be on the wall, if you consider the comments of some of the UCF sports fans referenced by Sentinel Sports Writer Illiana Limon in a Sunday blog post.  To summarize:  “Just wanted to say good-bye early to you as I will never pay to read an article online … Illiana, I will miss your coverage of UCF after next week when the OS starts charging. You do a great job, but I can’t pay for the site when I don’t read enough of the other stuff to make it worth it … Orlando will go from being a one newspaper town to a no newspaper town.”

If the entire audience has become as segmented as those who read the sport “pages,” the future could be very dim.

One thing is for sure.  Charging for their digital product will require they invest in content, quality and accuracy … things that many papers have forgotten as they dealt with the crippling loss of ad revenue.

Best of luck to what we used to proudly refer to in the banner as “Florida’s Best Newspaper.”