Bob_Grip's Blog

New Orleans is trying to come back from the devastation caused by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Unfortunately, it's not there yet and as a visitor to the city, it's hard to tell when it will be ready.

As you arrive in New Orleans from the east, you still pass entire neighborhoods and shopping centers that are abandoned. Because of the shortage of housing, New Orleans is one of the only cities in the country where property values rose from last year to this year.  That gets to another problem making life hard in the Big Easy.

Without affordable housing, it is difficult, if not impossible for the tourist industry to return to life.  There are simply very few places for workers to live.

That is apparent by looking at the service industry.  My wife and I recently stayed in a French Quarter hotel that wasn't cheap.  There was no one to help with parking (which is an immediate problem in the narrow streets of the Quarter). Those at the desk were surly. Rooms weren't ready when promised.  There was no one to seat you in the restaurant. Once you did get seated and served, it was difficult to find the waitress to get your check. (It took me 25 minutes. I had to go searching into the kitchen to find her.  The cooks didn't know where she was, either.)

Granted, mine was not a comprehensive look at tourism in New Orleans.  But if I were either a returning visitor or someone visiting for the first time, I would think twice about spending my vacation dollars there based on what happened.

You get what you pay for.  That's the bottom line, if you excuse the pun, of an essay by David Carr in Monday's New York Times.  He writes a column called "The Media Equation".

He starts by looking at Circuit City's plan to prop up its sagging bottom line.  It fired its most talented and experienced employees.  Guess what follows?  Sales fell and the company had to declare bankruptcy protection.

Carr sees an analogy between Circuit City's short-sighted short-term business plan and what is happening in the media nowadays, specifically the layoffs that are happening in the newspaper industry (see my blog, Skinny Mondays).  He wrote, "It is not the young fresh faces that are getting whacked--they come cheap--but the most experienced, proven people in the room..."

He continues, "...I have always thought of journalism as more craft than profession and tell students that it is the accumulation of experience and technique that makes a journalism valuable, not some ineffable beckoning of the muse."

Carr goes on to site Ken Doctor, a media analyst at a market analysis firm.  Doctor says, "It is not just the cutting, but the cutting of more-experienced staff, a kind of slow-motion suicide."

Another media consultant, Alan Mutter has the last word.  "Newspapers are aimed at the movers and shakers in a community--the car dealers, the retailers, the restaurant owners.  When they get together and realize they are looking at the paper, that it is less compelling than it used to be, it creates a vicious cycle of weaker readership and weaker advertising."

Mobile will get some positive, international publicity this Sunday in the New York Times.  An essay, complete with beautiful pictures will appear in the Winter Travel section.

Get a sneak peek by clicking here. 

  Veterans Day was always a special one around our house.  My Dad, a World War II vet, always brought me along to "help" him display the flag from our second story porch.  It was a small flag, no more than 18 inches long stapled to a wooden stick, but it was treated with as much reverence as the flag that flew over the White House.

I was taught to always make sure it never touched the floor, that we brought it inside immediately if it started to rain or when the sun began to set.

Later that day, since it was a day off from work and school, we would go to our church cemetery and make sure that every bronze grave marker had a new flag.  They usually got replaced every Veterans and Memorial Days.  My Dad wanted to make sure each veteran was remembered.

Considering their continued sacrifices, it is the least we can do on holidays like this.

I sometimes tell groups that my first job in news was for The New York Times.  When I was in high school.  After an appropriate pause, I add, "And those papers were heavy, too".

As I picked up this morning's Press-Register, I missed those days of good, thick newspapers.  The Monday papers lately are down to three sections instead of 4.  Instead of 2 pages of editorials, it's down to one.  The editorial section on Sunday was folded into another section.  The Living section, which my wife reads more than I do, has been losing weight as well.  That, combined with reports of longtime newspaper reporters being offered buy-outs, spells trouble.

It's not that the paper hasn't been trying to change with the times.  It does have an on-line presence, as clunky as it is. But its attempts at integrating video into stories have the look of a Flip Video camera and somebody being told, "While you're out there, shoot a little footage, too."

I've been reading a morning newspaper as long as I can remember, whether it was the Hartford Courant, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Columbus Dispatch or the Press Register. But I can tell you, I'm part of the market that is fading away.  When I ask my students at Spring Hill which papers they read, I find they don't.  Sure, they scan the internet and grab a few headlines here and there, but that's it.  That unfortunately seems to be the future of your traditional, daily newspaper.

Thank goodness the TV news audience has remained pretty stable.  Don't take my word for it.  Click here to read a recent study by the Pew Reseach Center for the People and the Press.

Papers have been hard hit by advertisers who are either moving to other media, or not spending as much.  It's a sign that sometimes change isn't a good thing.

With the Democrats in control of Congress and the White House, it may be time for Rush Limbaugh to start talking with Sirius/XM radio.  The Fairness Doctrine may be making a comeback.

The Fairness Doctrine (not to be confused with Equal Time, which applies only to making commercial time available to candidates) required radio and TV stations to present balanced information on controversial issues.  It was repealed in 1985 when the Federal Communications Commission chairman Mark Fowler announced that the Fairness Doctrine no longer served the public interest and in fact, was a violation of the First Amendment (Freedom of Speech).

While the President-Elect's office says he does not support re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine, that hasn't stopped some members of Congress, like New York Senator Chuck Schumer, from bringing up the idea.  While being interviewed by Fox News, he said, "I think we should all be fair and balanced, don’t you?"

Should the Fairness Doctrine be brought back to life, stations would be required to balance the comments of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage with those offering a different viewpoint.  When it comes to AM radio, there aren't enough hours in the day to do that.

That might force folks like Rush to follow the lead of Howard Stern, and move from over-the-air broadcasting to subscription (and so far, unregulated media) like satellite radio.

I want to know if anyone in the CNN PR department really looked at this ad before placing it in the November 3, 2008 issue of TIME magazine (page 82).

If you think many in the MSM have already called the election...well, you aren't alone.

     NEW YORK (AP) - John McCain supporters who believe they haven't
gotten a fair shake from the media during the Republican's
candidacy against Barack Obama have a new study to point to.
      Comments made by sources, voters, reporters and anchors that
aired on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over the past two
months reflected positively on Obama in 65 percent of cases,
compared to in 31 percent of cases with regards to McCain,
according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
      ABC's "World News" had more balance than NBC's "Nightly
News" or the "CBS Evening News," the group said.
      Meanwhile, the first half of Fox News Channel's "Special
Report" with Brit Hume showed more balance than any of the network
broadcasters, although it was dominated by negative evaluations of
both campaigns. The center didn't evaluate programs on CNN or
MSNBC.
      "For whatever reason, the media are portraying Barack Obama as
a better choice for president than John McCain," said Robert
Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the
center. "If you watch the evening news, you'd think you should
vote for Obama."
      The center analyzed 979 separate news stories shown between Aug.
23 and Oct. 24, and excluded evaluations based on the campaign
horse race, including mention of how the candidates were doing in
polls. For instance, when a voter was interviewed on CBS Oct. 14
saying he thought Obama brought a freshness to Washington, that was
chalked up as a pro-Obama comment.
      When NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported Oct. 1 that some
conservatives say that Sarah Palin is not ready for prime-time,
that's marked in the negative column for McCain.
      ABC recorded 57 percent favorable comments toward the Democrats,
and 42 percent positive for the Republicans. NBC had 56 percent
positive for the Democrats, 16 percent for the Republicans. CBS had
73 percent positive (Obama), versus 31 percent (McCain).
      Hume's telecast had 39 percent favorable comments for McCain and
28 percent positive for the Democratic ticket.
      It was the second study in two weeks to remark upon negative
coverage for the McCain-Palin ticket. The Project for Excellence in
Journalism concluded last week that McCain's coverage has been
overwhelmingly negative since the conventions ended, while Obama's
has been more mixed.
      Meanwhile, another survey issued Friday by the Pew Research
Center for the People & the Press showed that television continues
to be Americans' main source for campaign news, particularly the
cable news networks.
      But there were clear partisan differences in where people
turned.
      For instance, of the people who said they got most of their
campaign news from Fox News Channel, 52 percent identified
themselves as Republican, 17 percent as Democrats and 30 percent as
independents, the Pew center said.
      MSNBC viewers interested in campaign news identified themselves
at 11 percent Republican, 50 percent Democratic and 36 percent
independent. The breakdown for CNN: 13 percent Republican, 45
percent Democrat, 38 percent independent.
      The study was based on a survey of 2,011 people taken Oct. 17-20
and 24-27. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent.

I have to admit, I read the Reuters article twice before I believed what I was reading.

The story by Paul  Bond read in part:

In a room full of television industry executives, no one seemed inclined to defend MSNBC on Monday for what some were calling its lopsidedly liberal coverage of the presidential election.

The cable news channel is "completely out of control," said writer-producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, a self-proclaimed liberal Democrat.

She added that she would prefer a lunch date with right-leaning Fox News star Sean Hannity over left-leaning MSNBC star Keith Olbermann.

Bloodworth-Thomason, one of President Clinton's biggest supporters, was criticizing MSNBC for being out of control?

It got better.

"We should stop the demonizing," she said, adding that Democrats have been worse than Republicans as far as personal attacks on candidates are concerned. "It diminishes us," she said of her fellow Democrats.

Whoa.

The internet has been full of stories of reporters wincing over journalists calling the election before the polls have closed. 

Michael Malone posted a story on abcnews.com called "Media's Presidential Bias and Decline".  He said in part:

...nothing, nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.

Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.

That is, except for Joe Biden, who apparently thought the job of reporters is to ask softball questions.  (See my last blog entry).

American's collective memory is short.  That's why reporters need to think back to the last Presidential election, when their exit polling on election day even had John Kerry thinking he was about to be President.

As Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over 'til it's over".  We should report the news, and not try to predict it.

A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to be in Ireland during a national political campaign.   I was fascinated to see the interaction between journalists and candidates that played out, live on television.  It was completely focused on issues, and there were no holds barred.  The journalists I saw (I am happy to say) were as well versed on the issues as the candidates.  And the candidates didn't flinch at what they considered to be aggressive questioning that even made them a little angry.

I wish I could say that about candidates in our country, who seem more intent on avoiding reporters than encountering them.

An incident that happened last week in Orlando made me more than a little concerned about our (and therefore your) ability to question politicians.

After an anchor for WFTV in Orlando asked Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden if Barack Obama's plan to "share the wealth" amounted to socialism, Biden was visibly upset.  But it didn't end there.

The next day, the station received the following message from the Obama campaign: 

I regret to inform you that the interview scheduled for WFTV/ABC9 with Mrs. Jill Biden, today has been CANCELLED, as a result of her husband’s experience yesterday during the satellite interview with Barbara West. This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election."

Please.  How petty can you get?

I used to work for WFTV's News Director, Bob Jordan.  I can vouch for his integrity.  To his credit, he said the station chose not to toss softball questions at candidates.

This has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with transparency.  

I spent some time this week in classrooms, something I enjoy doing.  The first stop this week was at Phillips Preparatory School on Old Shell Road in Mobile, where I spoke with Ms. Wendy Brightman's class on Video Production.


I was happy to see they're outfitted with an iMac, MacBook Pro and other equipment that makes it easy to produce the stories they write, produce and broadcast throughout the school.  I even got interviewed by 2 prospective reporters!

Friday, I read to two classes at Oak Park Christian Academy on Sollie Road.  It was part of their BookIt program sponsored by Pizza Hut.  It encourages students to read, and I tried to do the same to the third graders in Mr. Jackson's class and the fourth graders in Mrs. Hultquist's class.

It's great to be back on the Gulf Coast after some time out to see my daughters and sons-in-law.


It was sweater weather in the Rocky Mountains..


..and warmer in Texas.


I was glad to get some props in New Mexico...


...and happy to see former President Lyndon Johnson's office at
his ranch in Johnson City, Texas.


I don't anticipate seeing this kind of weather in Mobile!

Some great new applications for the iPhone are now available.  They get the Bob Seal of Approval.

• One is called TouchType.  It's for everyone who doesn't like using a full-featured keyboard that is 2 inches wide.  For 99 cents, you get a keyboard that stretches along the length, not just the width of the iPhone screen.  It gives you a little more room.  Just type your mail message (it doesn't work with SMS), and press one key to paste it into your mail application.
• WunderRadio.  This comes from the folks who brought you Weather Underground, one of the best sites for weather information outside of fox10tv.com.  In a welcome feature for travelers, WunderRadio works with the iPhone's built-in GPS app to find the National Weather Service radio station closest to you.  It will do the same to find local radio stations that stream their programming.  In addition, it will allow you to find stations by genre (sports, talk, music) or by location.  If you want listen to Radio Dunedin on the South Island of New Zealand, it's there.  WBZ radio in Boston?  No problem.  And for you scanner hounds, WunderRadio also works with ScanAmerica.us to give you a chance to monitor emergency radio traffic in many states.  It's $5.99, but well worth it.
• Fring allows you to place calls without eating up your AT&T minutes.  Keep in mind, it only works if you're on a WiFi connection, but it does allow you to use your Skype account or SIP.  It also works with MSN Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk, or the chat only features of Twitter, Yahoo or AIM.  It can also save you a bundle if you travel outside the country and want to make calls.
  

Readers of this blog will remember me bringing up the issue of watching digital TV during a natural disaster, like a hurricane.  Well, at least one company has come up with a way to power a digital converter box when the electricity dies.

Winegard is known for making great antennas (I used one to help me receive distant FM signals in the day when you had to buy a separate FM radio to receive FM, but I digress..).

While reading a back issue of Television Week, I saw an article that contained the following information:

"Winegard Co....is in production on a battery pack for use with its government-approved converter box.  It uses 6 "D" cells and lasts for 18 hours...it can be purchased from winegarddirect.com for $14.99."  Keep in mind, that's in addition to the cost of the converter box that works with the battery pack.

As long as you have a battery powered TV that will accept an external antenna, you now have a way to receive a digital TV signal if you lose electric power.

I wanted to give you an update on negotiations with Bright House cable, which no longer has the right to carry the programs you love on Fox 10 and the Gulf Coast CW.

LIN Broadcasting (which owns and operates our two stations) is still negotiating and we hope for a fair resolution. You need to know that WALA/WBPG aren't the only TV stations asking for fair market value, as many people believe. In fact, all broadcasters are asking for compensation and nearly all cable companies, large and small, understand that they have to share subscriber fees with local TV stations, just as they do with cable networks. Time Warner, which negotiates on behalf of Bright House, is about to engage in many other retransmission disputes, while LIN TV has already reached all its deals.

Think of it this way.  Time Warner is charging its customers for a product or service it doesn't pay to receive.

Time Warner's main argument is that we should be free since our local broadcast signal is free to folks with an antenna. But there is no way it should be free to the second largest cable company in the nation that makes a lot of money re-selling the programming of local broadcasters!

Despite the tough economic climate, our company invests heavily in our news, our programming and in our local community. Again - other cable companies recognize that and partner with us. When we partner, everyone wins.