Decline in the Wall Street Journal Long Form Journalism

On Thursday, 4/17, by Alexis Madrigal



This chart speaks for itself. It shows the number of stories the Wall Street Journal published that were over 2,500 words from 2002 to 2011.   Recall that I said that the WSJ did not win a pulitzer price in journalism for a few years, and this year won awards for commentary and criticism.  Looking back at the Pulitzer Price for Investigative Journalism, WSJ won in 2004 and 2006 (and you can see in in the chart, that WSJ had many long form journalism until about 2007.

Dean Starkman of Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) created the chart and referenced it again today. (He used to work at the publication.) The Journal is not alone in this trend at the big papers, as CJR has also shown, but its numbers are the most startling.

Starkman points out that, Journalism prizes have no value for the public—zero—in and of themselves. Prizes do, however, offer bureaucratic and career incentives to the big, time-consuming, expensive, risky, agenda-setting work—especially investigations—that news organizations could very easily skip, and often do. The Pulitzers, being the most prestigious prize, by definition provide the greatest incentive.  

According to Starkman, the WSJ has been shut out of the Pulitzers, this being now the sixth year running. What’s more, they weren’t among the finalists. That means none of the entries got beyond the juries, which are drawn from news organizations around the country, and didn’t even make it to the board. In fact, the last time it actually won one on the news side was in 2007, which, not coincidentally, was the year Murdoch made his bid for the paper.
When Starkman first published the chart, WSJ responded:

The number of words in an article has never been the barometer by which the quality of a publication or its value to readers should be measured. Every article is reported with unique facts and anecdotes that are needed to best tell the story. We consider those factors, while respecting our readers' busy lives, when determining the length of an article. Our very strong circulation numbers suggest that readers think we're doing a good job.

All that said, if the editors thought there were 200 stories worth running at that length in 2002, it stands to reason that many of the 2011 stories were not better shorter. At least some longer, deeper, and more complex stories are either being shortened or left out entirely.

And what's most surprising to me [Alexis Madrigal] as a journalist who was working through the period of the Journal's greatest decline is that longform has always worked for the publications for which I've written. At both Wired and The Atlantic, our most successful stories in terms of impact or audience size have almost always been the deep, definitive ones that get shared all over the Internet.

Starkman suggests that Rupert Murdoch simply wanted to reduce the number of long stories.

Read more, including the Starkman article.  What do you think?

6 False Things You Heard About the Boston Bombing

Given our conversation today about all the false rumors spread about the Boston Marathon, here's rundown from Mother Jones of 6 false things mentioned in the new about the bombing.  Granted, there's still a lot we don't know about Monday's bombing at the Boston Marathon's finish line, but one thing we do know is that many of the initial reports on media outlets on Monday and early Tuesday have been proven false.  It's expected during a breaking news event, but even some law enforcement officials did more to confuse than clarify.  One day later, follow some of the story lines that fizzled upon further scrutiny.

1. Cellphone service shut down in Boston
2. Explosions kill 12 people
3. Bombing at JFK Library
4. Saudi national in custody
5. Five additional incendiary devices found
6. Police have security footage of a "possible suspect"

Did you hear of any other rumors that fizzled?  Did you believe it when you heard it?  Tim O? :)

Supreme Court will decide if your genes can be patented

On Monday, the justices will grapple with a big, seemingly straightforward question: Can a company patent a human gene? Two genes: BRCA1 and BRCA2 are linked to women who are at higher risk for breast cancer. In the mid 1990s, the geneticist who won the race to find the precise locations of the genes (on chromosomes 17 and 13), and isolate them, founded Myriad Genetics and took out 20-year patents on the genes themselves. Myriad then developed the test women take to discover whether they are BRCA carriers.

The problem is that Myriad’s test was the only one. Doctors and scientists who wanted to develop alternatives were blocked. Patients had no choices. The company’s handling of its monopoly generated outrage “Why were physicians and scientists so upset? It was the breadth of Myriad’s claims,” Robert Cook-Deegan, a policy researcher at Duke, explained to me. “And it really bothers women when they can’t get a second opinion, and there’s only one way to get the test, which is the way Myriad has chosen. This case is about who gets to make decisions—whether the company with the patent gets to say, ‘this is how we’re going to do testing for these genes in the United States.’ ”

The point of patents is to protect the investment it took to create or invent something new. It’s a way we reward and encourage invention. In 1793, as Yale history of science professor Daniel Kevles points out in his extremely helpful article for the New York Review of Books, Congress borrowed the words of Thomas Jefferson and declared patents available “for any new and useful art.” In 1952, the scope of potential patents expanded to “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement.” 

Does “composition of matter” include the BRCA genes—and should it?

 According to Kelves, the company blocked several biomedical scientists from conducting clinical research on the BRCA DNA, except under severe restrictions. It could, if it wished, prevent scientists from exploring the meaning of mutations of unknown significance that the tests might reveal. Myriad also kept for itself the right to incorporate the discovery of the new alterations in the BRCA genes, even those made by others, into the diagnostic tests. It thus retarded the development of the most comprehensive tests possible for women at risk. Except as the company allowed, no other laboratory could assess the reliability of its tests or improve upon their speed or cost.

 Kelves goes on to say, "By empowering Myriad to control all research and uses of a unique part of nature, the patents impeded the progress of science and the useful arts. By restricting access to and use of the genetic information that the DNA embodied, they gave Myriad control over all 'thought, knowledge, and ideas' concerning the genes, a monopoly that the First Amendment, in accord with judicial holdings, prohibited the PTO [Patent Trade Office] from granting." Thus, with Myriad, the Court stands on the verge of endorsing a venerable principle in biotechnology patent law: human beings are improper subject matter for patenting.

Read the original link in Slate.

I especially encourage a better understanding by reading the article by Daniel Kelves' in the NYTimes Review of Books, "Can They Patent Your Genes?"

Divorcing your ISP for T-Mobile

I can see why many people do not divorce Google, no matter how bad their privacy invasions are, but would you divorce your current ISP for T-Mobile.  I am.  Some of you know of the "Great Cellphone Subsidy Con" but if you don't, read this NYT article on how to break free of cellphone contracts and penalties.  The offer by T-Mobile is hard to pass up, especially knowing how much money you give your ISP beyond the price of your phone.  PLUS, you can leave T-Mobile at any time with no penalties!  Granted, they are last on the block, but they will get bigger.

My daughter needs a new iPhone (yes, T-Mobile now accepts all phones), and I'm tired of paying way too much for a family plan.  They can all move to T-Mobile.

So, are you divorcing your current ISP, knowing what you now know??   

The Child, the Tablet, and the Developing Mind

As I finish up your unplugged challenges, I read today (3/31) this blog in the NY Times on the effect of disruptions on very young children's developing minds.  It starts with a mom pulling two iPads out of her "magic bag" to give to her two very young children who were squabbling in a restaurant while the mom was trying to have a conversation with her brother, Nick Bolton, the author.  The kids were immediately quiet.  He wrote the article because his sister wondered if she were doing the right thing by shutting up her kids with iPads.

To summarize, Nick learned: (1) Dr. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of "iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind", says we do know that the brain is highly sensitive to stimuli, like iPads and smartphone screens, and if people spend too much time with one technology, and less time interacting with people like parents at the dinner table, that could hinder the development of certain communications skills.

(2) Is it an electronics vs. non-electronics issue?  Is coloring on a piece of paper better than coloring on an iPad? Ozlem Ayduk, an associate professor in the Relationships and Social Cognition Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, said it didn't matter. Children sitting at the dinner table with a print book or crayons were not as engaged with the people around them, either. “There are value-based lessons for children to talk to the people during a meal,” she said. “It’s not so much about the iPad versus nonelectronics.”

“Conversations with each other are the way children learn to have conversations with themselves, and learn how to be alone,” said Sherry Turkle, a professor of science, technology and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of the book “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.” “Learning about solitude and being alone is the bedrock of early development, and you don’t want your kids to miss out on that because you’re pacifying them with a device.” (my emphasis). She goes on to say that children "need to be able to explore their imagination. To be able to gather themselves and know who they are. So someday they can form a relationship with another person without a panic of being alone,” she said. “If you don’t teach your children to be alone, they’ll only know how to be lonely.” Read more...

 After reading your unplugged challenges, it makes me think maybe you are unable to be alone from technology (unless you are isolated from others). What do you think? You're in your 20s and in college, so you have more opportunities to see and talk to people, to develop social skills, but will your future relationships (personal, work) hinge on your friends on Facebook. If you are better talking to people in person, to what do you attribute this? If not, why not? Does it go back to childhood?

Wisdom 2.0

Arriana Huffington recently spent the weekend at the happiest place on Earth.  It wasn't Disneyland, but if felt like that to her.  Last week she went to a conference called Wisdom 2.0, which is designed to address "the great challenge of our age: to not only live connected to one another through technology, but to do so in ways that are beneficial to our own well-being, effective in our work, and useful to the world."

The conference is in its third year, and its founder and host is Soren Gordhamer, who has dedicated himself to helping conference members find ways to tap into our inner wisdom even as we integrate more and more technology into our lives. This is also the topic of his book, Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Secrets for the Creative and Constantly Connected.

What is timely about reading this article is that it is exactly the point we discussed in class, and that the readings on our "Brains on Computers" about what we know to be true: that technology is taking over practically every aspect of our lives. "There is also a growing awareness that our increasing dependence on technology puts us at risk of becoming disconnected from ourselves. The fact that this awareness, and the desire to do something about it, is no longer confined to the touchy-feely crowd was amply demonstrated in the conference's list of speakers, which drew from nearly every sector of society." They included:

• Bill Ford, Executive Chairman of Ford Motor Company
• Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn
• Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. She's not only the first Hindu member of Congress, but, along with newly elected Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, one of the House's first female combat veterans.
• Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer of Cisco.
• Sherry Turkle, psychologist and author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.
• Thupten Jinpa, Buddhist scholar, writer, principal English translator for the Dalai Lama, and a visiting scholar at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford's School of Medicine.
• Jon Kabat-Zinn, emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and author of the mindfulness classic, Wherever You Go, There You Are.

Clearly, this was not an anti-technology crowd. Most of them had already launched successful careers, and were at the stage where they're charging ahead and hitting their strides. Having spent a large part of their lives getting acquainted with the benefits of technology, they are now increasingly realizing the costs.

Read this article and link to the Wisdom 2.0 list of speakers.  After you see the list, click on the Videos at the top of the page.  As you contemplate the Unplugged Challenge, you should realize that you are in good company and take it seriously.   Rather than focus on how miserable you are, try to settle in on the quiet.

What do you think?  Are you, or others that you know, giving up some degree of technology use.  It is  a habit, if not an addiction.  Habits can be broken.  I'm just giving you a reason to do so.  Thoughts?

Why Kids Can't Search

I was in the middle of finding an article for the class related to the topic of privacy, when I found this article in Wired by Clive Thompson (another great resource, I'll post later).  It had to do with how bad students are in searching for information.  I think it's useful to post this now as you get ready to find blog posts.

He starts by saying that young people tend to be the most tech-savvy among us.  But they are wretched at searching.  A group of researchers led by College of Charleston business professor Bing Pan tried to find out. Specifically, Pan wanted to know how skillful young folks are at online search.  His team gathered a group of college students and asked them to look up the answers to a handful of questions. Perhaps not surprisingly, the students generally relied on the web pages at the top of Google’s results list.

Other studies have found the same thing: In a recent experiment at Northwestern, when 102 undergraduates were asked to do some research online, none went to the trouble of checking the authors’ credentials. In 1955, we wondered why Johnny can’t read. Today the question is, why can’t Johnny search?

But it may not be your fault.  Professors assume you already have this skill, even though it is rarely taught.  "The buck stops nowhere."   Why not let students start a class blog on a subject and see how long it takes for it to show up in search results?  I may just try this.

Read more...  We'll talk about this more in class, but one of the reasons I post other websites is to get you AWAY from using Google (and YouTube) for EVERYTHING.  Try some critical thinking.  It will help you in the long run.  

For Super Bowl Ads, More Social-Media Savvy

According to CBS, some superbowl spots have gone for as much as $4 million for 30 seconds of an ad. With an audience expected to be more than 100 million people, it's the biggest thing on television. But advertisers know they also need digital, and they're going to great lengths to get it.

There are ads that ask viewers to vote on the endings (as Kyle pointed out in his blog for Lincoln), but there is also Coke ads.
Doritos was way ahead of the game. For the sixth year in a row, it's running a contest called Crash the Super Bowl, where people submit fully produced commercials. Out of some 3,000 entries, Doritos selected five finalists. People can vote for their favorites online.  And they're pretty impressive.  Go to this article and enjoy.  I spent WAY too long viewing these ads, and loving it.   Voting I think is "liking" on Facebook, though I see some liking on YouTube.

For a kick, check this out.

By the way, I'm watching House of Cards, a political drama adapted from a British show, and starring Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright, and others.  David Fincher (known for The Social Network, Seven) directed the first two episodes. But what's new about House of Cards is that all 13 episodes are available at once — and they were financed by Netflix itself.  The new Netflix produced show started today.  If you have Netflix, this is a game-changer in TV series.

Documentary throws the book at Google scanning project

In "Google and the World Brain", Ben Lewis' thoughtful new documentary about the search giant's effort to scan all the world's books (link to the documentary shows a trailer of the movie).  

The most arresting moment takes place in a monastery high above Catalonia in Spain.  The film's globetrotting crew is interviewing Father Damiá Roure, who runs the library at the Benedictine abbey of Montserrat, about what happened when Google came to digitize the library's collection.   

The monk's mixed feelings about the book-scanning project are mirrored by many interviewees in the 89-minute documentary, which premiered this week at the Sundance Film Festival.   While the film contains interviews with people who question whether a corporation should be able to own the world's knowledge, it also offers a relatively straightforward account of the Google Books project and the legal case against it. At the end it credits Google with galvanizing public libraries into putting more of their collections online.  

Google began scanning books in 2002, relatively early in its history, working with major university libraries around the globe. By 2005 the company had scanned more than 10 million books, with more than half of them still protected by copyright. In the autumn of that year, the Author's Guild filed a class action lawsuit against Google, seeking damages for its writers and new protections for digital copies of copyrighted works.

After three years of intensive negotiations, Google and the Author's Guild emerged with a 350-page settlement agreement. Among other things, Google agreed to give authors in the suit $60 per copyrighted work, in exchange for the right to start selling digital books online. And it's this point that turns out, strangely, to be the real start of the film, as what the filmmakers describe as "a ragbag army of authors, helped by the occasional librarian" come together to protest the settlement and, in 2011, successfully get it rejected by a federal judge.

We'll talk about this case when we discuss copyrights.    Read more...

French Twitter Lawsuit Pits Free Speech Against Hate Speech

Twitter is developed by Americans but is used around the world.   Legal and cultural systems, especially in Europe, often clash about privacy issues and hate speech.    You can listen to or download the transcript.  Here is brief summary.  Look at the trackback link below for more details about what happened in October, when the news broke.

A French judge will decide this week if Twitter must hand over the identities of users sending anti-Semitic tweets. The case, brought against Twitter by a Jewish student organization, pits America's free speech guarantees against Europe's laws banning hate speech.

The controversy began in October, when the French Union of Jewish Students threatened to sue Twitter to get the names of people posting anti-Semitic tweets with the hashtag #unbonjuif, or "a good Jew."

"If I type 'un bon Juif' ... I can see it was full of tweets against Jews," says Eli Petit, vice president of the Jewish student organization. "It was written, for example, 'A good Jew is a dead Jew,' 'A good Jew is a burned Jew.'"


For Christopher Mesnooh, an American lawyer who practices in France, the case is a "classic example of a clash of cultures that shows up in the way different legal systems deal with the same issue....  In the United States, we give virtually absolute protection to free speech — even if it's offensive to different minorities," he says.

"Europe, France and Germany in particular have taken   a different direction. What they have decided is that because of what happened during the Holocaust and World War II more generally, that certain kinds of speech, when directed at minorities, has to be circumscribed or even prevented," he says.

Do you think what Twitter did  was reasonable or is this hate speech that requires identifying the culprits? 

Tweets from Hurricane Sandy

I found this link from iRevolution.net.  It's a great website, and this YouTube video is a visualization of how tweets spread as Hurricane Sandy hit eastern coast.   There is also a lot of research and websites on using social media for emergency response.

Facebook's Graphic Search

As we saw briefly in class, Facebook announced their new Graph Search.  Here is an article (of the many that have been covered in pretty much all online and print news links) that shows you how it works, what it offers, etc.  What do you think?  Another gimmick or a real challenge to Google?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/01/15/169436642/facebook-unveils-new-graph-search-adding-a-new-pillar-to-services

Some ideas for Assignment 1

  Assignment 1 on Technology and Values asks you to find an article or story where existing or proposed computer-based technology has significant implications for one of the five values associated with the Envisioning Cards.   I find them all the time.  So in the interest of helping you out, here are topics you can find in most major tech journals and news outlets.  Remember to look at my "Blog List" available on this blog.  I thought about giving you an example, but we ran through a few in class.  Here are some topics to consider:

• Copyright protection (music is the one you think of first, mostly because Napster hit the headlines) but from an economic standpoint motion pictures, software, video games, and publishing, to name a few, are bigger piece of the economic pie.  
• copyrights depends crucially on technology
• lots of stakeholders, lots of value conflicts
• it's not just about stealing being bad; it's much more complex than that. 
• Privacy trade-offs
• vs. security
• non-transparency
• monitoring
• Latest electronics, games, etc.
• Crowdsourcing innovations
• Disrupted technologies
• Clean technologies
• Online versions of college courses. Is it a fad or is higher education about to get the overhaul it needs?
• Heard a Science Friday today (11/11) about cancer research and genetic testing to find genetic mutations as a way to treat cancer in new ways.  Sounds pretty clear cut, but no technology is a win-win remember, so consider the values, stakeholders, non-intended uses.
• Read recently in the NY Times (11/7/13) that Disney Parks are going digital.  Visitors would wear rubber bracelets encoded with credit card information, "snapping up corn dogs and Mickey Mouse ears with a tap of the wrist. Smart phones alerts would signal when it is time to ride Space Mountain without standing in line."  It's supposed to happen this spring.  The idea: "If we can enhance the experience, more people will spend more of their leisure time with us."
• On the same page in the NYTimes (11/7/13), major media cable companies threaten to drop underperforming channels that are mostly on their own (e.g., Al Gore's Current TV was dropped by Time Warner and then recently sold to Al Jazeera).  But even though large distributors have talked about belt-tightening, two things are different now: potential Web competitors are creeping up (e.g., Crackle.com and the like), and creeping costs, particularly for sports casters and broadcasters.  The article goes on to talk about many other channels getting the ax and protests against it.

Hope this helps and doesn't overwhelm.