Democrat Convention Night 1: Your reactions…

Post your reactions to tonight’s Democrat convention coverage here (while I go battle my Internet yet again…grumble, grumble)…

GOP Convention Day 2: Your Reactions

Post your reactions to tonight’s convention coverage here…

Hurricane Isaac: Your coverage reactions…

With Convention coverage winding down for the night, Hurricane Isaac coverage is ramping up. Post your reactions of the coverage here…

GOP Convention Night 1: Your Reactions…

Post your reactions to tonight’s first night of the GOP Convention, and the coverage thereof, here…

Pondering Jim Bell’s Future…

Reuters’ Liana B. Baker writes about the future of Today EP and London Olympics EP Jim Bell…

Jim Bell, the executive producer who spearheaded NBC’s London Olympics coverage and shouldered most of the criticism directed at the network, is poised for a promotion to a larger role within NBC’s news or sports division, according to four sources familiar with the situation.

These sources say Bell is well-regarded by Steve Burke, the Comcast executive who runs NBC Universal for the cable company, and is likely to move up within the next six months.

Ahead of the Olympics there were internal rumors that Bell, who also serves as executive producer of the “Today” show, was in line for a bigger job at NBC News, which is currently headed by Steve Capus. That talk petered out when Capus kept his job after Comcast reorganized the division in July, bringing in Patricia Fili-Krushel to head the news unit’s business operations.

One of the sources, who is close to NBC, said Bell is probably in line for a kind of uber-producing sports role like the one Dick Ebersol – NBC’s longtime Olympics executive producer and former Sports Chief who served as a mentor to Bell – played for the network.

Free for All: 08/15/12

What’s on your mind?

Great Minds Think Alike…or…Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery… (You Choose)

ICN last night on Twitter…

Biggest beneficiary of the Romney/Ryan news: Fareed Zakaria. Blows his suspension story off the rundown…

Dan Abrams this morning on Twitter…

Who benefits most from the timing of the Romney/Ryan announcement? Fareed Zakaria. His admission and suspensions get buried.

Sarcasm?

How to Become a CAble News Journalist in 8 Easy Steps

Today, a news anchor, particularly a cable news anchor, could be made out of anyone, assuming they come pre-packaged with the personality of an android set to “telemarketer” mode and the inability to decipher fact from fiction. I’m so confident that any human alive could easily turn themselves in to a modern cable news anchor that I’ve broken down the process in to 8 easy to follow steps that anyone can use to get their faces on TV and their mouths talking about crap their minds can’t even comprehend.

Don’t believe me? Here are some testimonials from satisfied followers of my plan…

“Before I followed Luis’ plan I was a chimp. A real, honest-to-God chimp. As in chimpanzee. I ate bananas and everything.” –Definitely not Steve Doocy

“Whenever I decide to become a real journalist, I’ll follow the patented Prada Plan!” –Probably Chris Matthews

The Weather Channel’s Political Ad Courting…

MediaPost’s David Goetzl writes about The Weather Channel courting online political campaign dollars…

Politicians who find the prevailing winds blowing against them can now turn to the Weather Channel to build support. The channel is joining many other media companies with an aggressive approach to landing political dollars between now and election day.

In partnership with mobile advertising facilitator Jumptap, the Weather Channel has launched a program where candidates can geographically target users of its mobile platforms. The company says its mobile content reaches 30 million-plus users a month.

Colorado Movie Massacre: Your Reactions

Post your reactions to the coverage of last night’s Colorado Movie Massacre here…

Fact Checking Social Media News Submissions…

Nieman Reports’ David Turner writes about the lengths the BBC goes to verify social media user generated news submissions…

Started in 2005 to sift through unsolicited contributions previously perused by many different teams, the Hub has grown to a complement of 20 staffers. Initially, the team focused heavily on images, footage and eyewitness accounts e-mailed to the BBC, but in the past few years people have become much more prone to distribute material themselves through Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. As a result, the number of contributions proffered to the BBC has declined to about 3,000 a day, and the Hub’s task has moved toward semi-conventional newsgathering with a Web 2.0 twist. Staffers now use search terms, see what’s trending on Twitter, and look at the images and footage trusted contacts are discussing on their Twitter streams.

The golden rule, say Hub veterans, is to get on the phone whoever has posted the material. Even the process of setting up the conversation can speak volumes about the source’s credibility: unless sources are activists living in a dictatorship who must remain anonymous to protect their lives, people who are genuine witnesses to events are usually eager to talk. Anyone who has taken photos or video needs to be contacted in any case to request their permission, as the copyright holder, to use it.

The risk of posting non-authenticated images is high, as the Hub was reminded on Sunday, May 27. As a breaking news story about a massacre in Houla, Syria, unfolded, staff members spotted a powerful photo circulated on Twitter, showing shrouded bodies in rows and apparently sourced from activists in Syria. “The original distributor of the photo on Twitter was tracked down, we spoke to them, and they gave us information about its sourcing,” says Chris Hamilton, the BBC’s social media editor since 2011. “So the picture was published on the BBC News website, with a disclaimer saying it could not be independently verified.”

Weather Everywhere?

MediaPost’s David Goetzl writes about an interesting Weather Channel pitch to advertisers…

The Weather Channel is pitching advertisers on a type of bed-to-bed exposure. With a four-platform campaign, advertisers would reach consumers turning on the TV in the morning, visiting weather.com at work and using a tablet while watching TV in prime time. Add to that checking forecasts during the day on mobile.

The network has released a study showing that a four-screen campaign for Hallmark cards led to a 97% lift in a combined metric incorporating brand favorability and purchase intent. A three-screen effort yielded a 53% lift.

Supreme Court Health Care Ruling: Your Reactions…

Barring a natural/un-natural disaster striking somewhere or a terrorist attack, expect today’s Health Care ruling to suck the air out of everything on cable news today. So post your comments here regarding today’s soon to be wall to wall overcoverage…

Social Media Policy Meets the NLRB…

Poynter’s Jeff Sonderman writes about Social Media Policies getting NLRB scrutiny…

In at least six recent cases, according to a memo from the general counsel, the independent federal agency that investigates unfair labor practices has found provisions of employer social media policies to be unlawful.

The NLRB seems particularly concerned with any restriction that might impair employees’ rights to discuss employment terms and conditions publicly or with each other. The guiding law here is Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, which gives workers the rights to organize, unionize and bargain collectively.
What’s over the line?

The 24-page memo details many examples of employers who went too far in trying to restrict what employees can do online. Here are some social media policy provisions the NLRB ruled unlawful:

Instruction not to “reveal non-public company information on any public site.”
Warning to “think carefully about ‘friending’ co-workers.”
“Don’t comment on any legal matters, including pending litigation or disputes.”
“Don’t post photos, music, videos, quotes, or personal information of others without their permission.”
“Adopt a friendly tone when engaging online. Don’t pick fights. … Don’t make any comments about [Employer’s] customers, suppliers or competitors that might be considered defamatory.”
“You are encouraged to resolve concerns about work by speaking with co-workers, supervisors, or managers. [Employer] believes that individuals are more likely to resolve concerns about work by speaking directly with co-workers, supervisors or other management-level personnel than by posting complaints on the Internet.”
“Avoid harming the image and integrity of the company.”
Do not express public opinions about ”the workplace, work satisfaction or dissatisfaction, wages hours or work conditions.”

News networks are probably going to be reviewing their policies to see if they run afoul of the NLRB…

Nicole Mitchell Sues The Weather Channel Regarding USERRA Complaint

Former Weather Channel Meteorologist Nicole Mitchell was suing The Weather Channel, but is now in arbitration regarding USERRA discrimination. USERRA is an acronym for the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. Mitchell posted this on her Facebook page today…

First, thank you all for your continued support since my departure from TWC. We are making my lawsuit public because there is a much larger issue of military discrimination and legal protections that need public attention.

I talk about these issues in our press conference along with what happened at TWC, and I would be honored if you guys would support and help share this important information. (Translation…repost at will!) Thank you!

This is a partial answer to many questions you guys have asked about what happened at TWC. We finally went forward and spoke to the press today, which was nerve-wracking, and I will post the link to that conference when it is available…..

For Immediate Release

WEATHER CHANNEL SUED FOR MILITARY DISCRIMINATION

Air Force Reserve “Hurricane Hunter” Harassed, Loses Job over Service to Country

Inside MundoFOX

TVNewser’s Alex Weprin writes about News Corp.’s new Spanish Language channel, MundoFOX, and talks with its VP of News…

News will be a significant part of the new channel, according to Jorge Mettey, the senior VP of news at MundoFox.

“We have a lot of expectations; we strongly believe that we have a different approach and the right people, the vision and the ability to communicate at a different level,” Mettey tells TVNewser.

The basics: the network will launch with a single news show, an evening news program anchored by Rolando Nichols of KWHY Los Angeles, a MundoFox affiliate. There will be two live half-hours produced every weekday, one for the east coast and a second, customized version for the west coast.

So far, MundoFox has secured affiliates in 40 markets, including L.A., Miami, Dallas, San Francisco and Chicago, and is expected to have deals in New York and Houston shortly, rounding out the top 10 markets. In total, the network will reach around 70% of Hispanic households at launch.

I saw a MundoFOX spot on Fox Soccer Channel yesterday. What was odd is that I got the feeling this was a cable channel because it was telling viewers to call their provider to get the channel. But apparently it’s not a cable channel so I’m not clear why the spot went out with that appeal.

Cable News Peakage…

Reuters’ Jack Shafer argues that Cable News audience has peaked. That would potentially be bad news for FNC and its quest to be taken seriously as a viable alternative to ABC, NBC, and CBS. If you can’t match the ratings of (or beat) one of the big three…you’re not competitive. I don’t know if cable news audiences have peaked or not as Shafer argues. It may be that audiences have peaked for the format of cable news we currently have (heavy on politics and political news and increasing use of POV) but I wouldn’t shut the door completely on no more upside just yet.

The first sign of a peak in cable news appeared in March 2011, when the Pew Research Center released a study that proclaimed, “Though many will remember 2010 as a hard year for CNN, in reality, most cable news channels suffered audience losses.” The able chartists at Pew drew a sad graph of cable news. Combined median viewership for CNN, Fox News and MSNBC during prime time had receded 16 percent, to 3.2 million, that year. Mean viewership had also dropped 13 percent, to 3.3 million, making it the largest year-to-year drop for cable news since Pew started analyzing the numbers in 1997. It also marked the first drop in the median audience since 2006.

The bad news continued through 2011, as cable news viewership remained nearly flat. This was fairly astonishing considering all the breaking news from that year – the Arab Spring, Japan’s tsunami, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Libyan civil war and the European economic crisis – not to mention the bustle of the presidential campaign.

Shafer goes on to extrapolate what this peakage could mean…

But as cable news has peaked, so too has Fox News Channel President Roger Ailes. He’ll continue to call the plays at his channel, but unless he comes up with something startlingly new, he won’t be able to cause any greater public ruckus with his shows. And if Ailes and Fox News have peaked, what of Media Matters for America, David Brock’s advocacy group? Media Matters polices Fox News with such dedication that it’s become the network’s finest publicist, pushing Fox News stories to liberal audiences who would otherwise never be aware of them. Oh, Media Matters will continue to ding Fox News. But if the Fox News audience isn’t growing, Media Matters can’t expect its followers to be more scandalized about Fox News than they already are.

Bill O’Reilly? Peaked. Chris Matthews? Peaked. Anderson Cooper? Peaked. Democratic Party outrage over what Fox News said about the president? Peaked. Maddow, Hannity, O’Donnell, Sharpton? Peaked, peaked, peaked, peaked.

News? What News?

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Joe Garofoli writes about the lack of news in cable news these days… (via J$)

“Cookie-gate” was the latest in a series of near-daily items that have dominated the presidential campaign recently. Somehow, rocker and outdoors enthusiast Ted Nugent, Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen, Romney’s dog Seamus and President Barack Obama’s long-ago description of eating dog as a child have taken turns dominating the national conversation.

But even though news outlets use these sexy-sounding reports — as well as the latest poll or Twitter feud — as chum to lure readers and viewers, surveys say there is no more interest in this year’s presidential campaign than in comparable years like 1996, the last time a first-term Democratic president faced a GOP challenger.

Nevertheless, get ready for six more months of nonstory stories as the traditional political calendar and the journalistic news cycle have been overtaken by a 24-hour onslaught of information.

Worst 2012 Predictions…

Salon’s Jim Newell writes about the worst predictions of Campaign 2012. Why is this being linked here? Go down the list. Just about every one of them ate up considerable airtime on cable news. If the predictions proved woefully off the mark, what’s that say about cable news?

The dirty little secret about political punditry, that is not actually a secret to anyone who watches and reads it, is that it’s all lies. It requires very little knowledge or skill, and there are no consequences for being wrong. For a major newspaper to fire one of its columnists for getting something wrong would bring down the whole pundit industry, as that logic would necessitate the firing of them all. Every election pundit is wrong about everything, nearly all the time, and there’s usually a direct correlation between a pundit’s frequency of wrongness and his or her status — see the Washington Post’s stable of columnists for a prime example. The entire punditocracy is a sham, but thank you for reading anyway.

Correcting The Record…

The New York Times’ David Carr writes about the dearth of on air TV News corrections out there and uses NBC’s Zimmerman edit as exmample #1…

I called Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, prepared to do battle over the lack of on-air remediation. Even though Mr. Capus had personally investigated the error, issued two statements on the matter, taken disciplinary action against six employees and led a series of meetings to remind people of best practices, nobody on the “Today” show had explained what happened, or apologized for it, to the audience.

That seemed wrong to me. A network’s primary contract is with the viewers who tune in to its shows every day, one that is more important than any obligation it feels to journalistic pundits or Beltway politicos.

“You’re probably right,” Mr. Capus said right away.

Gee, I hate when that happens. All of the arguments I had rehearsed were suddenly defused. We talked some more anyway.

“The reality is that we didn’t try to hide from it,” he said. “We did an awful lot of work after it happened. We did an exhaustive investigation, I did interviews with a lot of publications to get the message out, but we probably should have done it on our own air.”

Mr. Capus said that they were so busy cleaning up the mess “inside our own halls,” that they neglected to loop in the audience. In that sense, the process was probably too “self-reflective,” he added.

Breaking News: Breaking News is Broken…

This is a Fox News Alert. Dave Weigel writes in Slate about the destruction of the Breaking News story by cable news and the internet…

“Breaking news” is an old concept, codified by the Associated Press in 1906 when the wire wanted to designate “news of transcendent importance.” The AP used the term “FLASH.” Other news-breakers used “bulletin,” “alert,” whatever gave off the right “stop editing the crossword and print this” vibe. Something important had just happened. This news service had confirmed it. Now you knew.

This system was abused, obviously, and the misuse of “breaking” ramped up with the birth of cable news. We should cleave TV from the rest of the media—the Internet doesn’t need to be blamed for all the sins of harried 24-hour news merchants. But TV and the Internet got drunk on “breaking” on the same day. It was Sept. 11, 2001. Three cable networks and an evolving blogosphere had a story that changed minute-to-minute, with confusing details and rumors out of nowhere and, eventually, a hot war in central Asia.

Constant “breaking” news alerts made sense in those weeks. And then the news cycle slowed down. The TV channels shrugged and kept using “breaking” and “alerts” at a greater pace than ever. “It got trivialized and people couldn’t unring the bell,” says Craig Allen, a professor at Arizona State and a historian of TV news. “It’s just horrible now. We’ve got TVs on the wall I walk past in the morning. My eye is trained to notice a ‘BREAKING’ alert and pay more attention. So is yours. But half the time I see an alert, and it turns out it’s somebody announcing an announcement of an announcement of a news conference.”

The George Zimmerman Freak Show…

The New York Times’ Brian Stelter writes about the media freak show that’s going to ensue if George Zimmerman goes to trial…

While a trial of Mr. Zimmerman, who was charged last week with second degree murder in Mr. Martin’s death, will most likely not start for months, if ever — The Sentinel over the weekend reported that most such charges in Florida are settled with a pretrial plea — some in the news media are already predicting blanket coverage by television networks and Web sites.

If the case goes to trial, “it has the potential to be as big as the O. J. Simpson trial — and just as divisive,” said Piers Morgan, the CNN interviewer.

Morgan is wrong. This won’t be O.J. II. It will be Rodney King II and regardless of the outcome whatever racial divisions that were exposed after OJ was acquitted will pale in comparison. You can already tell this will be worse than OJ because there was comparatively little racial issue discussion in the run up to his trial. With Zimmerman racial overtones have been present since day 1.

ICN’s “Moles for Morons” (Gawker Edition)

Whether Gawker’s FNC Mole has indeed been found, or not, this whole incident would make an excellent case study on how not to be a network news mole. With that in mind, ICN presents its new how to:

(cue booming NASCAR racing radio ad voice)

MOLES…FOR…MORONS…

(end booming NASCAR racing radio ad voice)

Rule #1: Don’t go to Gawker. They don’t view you as a resource that requires nurturing and protection. They view you as the commodity equivalent of cannon fodder; something that gets used up and then disposed of.

Rule #2: Don’t go to Gawker. Seriously, after the Brian Williams email incident, if I was a prospective mole looking to toss dirt I would never trust them to make sure I don’t expose myself too much.

Rule #3: Develop a long relationship with whoever you choose to mole out to before you decide to mole out. If you’re going to put yourself at risk, you need to know that you can trust, within obvious reason, the person you’re dealing with. More importantly a long prior relationship will give you a sense of the sort of character the person you’re dealing with has (see Rules 1 and 2).

Rule #4: You think you’re being smart and clever. You aren’t necessarily smart and clever enough.

Rule #5: As a result of Rule #4 you need to be paranoid about what information you’re going to reveal. There are no fingerprints going back to you, right? Are you sure? Really sure? Check again. And then check again.

Rule #6: Whenever possible spin your story so that it looks like its coming out of some area/department other than yours. For example, If you saw something happen on set during a commercial break, instead of telling that to the person you’re leaking, say “the cafeteria was abuzz today regarding…”. It will make the network chase its tail and not you.

Rule #7: Don’t be an idiot and send recent event video. These networks all have their video stored on hard drives with databases. And all that stuff can be logged and checked to see who accessed what and when. Instead of sending video, describe the scene and events that took place to the person you’re leaking to. This way the network will not be sure whether you looked at the video or you heard about this stuff second hand through newsroom chatter.

Rule #8: If the video is just too good to ignore, you’re going to have to sit on it for quite a while before you dare reveal it. And then if you do reveal it you’re going to have to make sure that the reveal can’t be traced back to you. You may have to get radically creative and use someone else’s station to grab the video. Yeah, you’re screwing them over but if you’re being a mole you aren’t happy anways so screw ‘em. Even better, screw over someone you hate working with.

Rule #9: Be selective. If you leak every day or multiple times per week you are guaranteeing that the network is going to come after you, if they can find you. And they will make it a priority to try and find you. Instead of being a blab-o-phile, pick and choose your targets to leak and keep them dispersed to no more than once every couple of months. If you keep a lower profile and aren’t very prolific, it will make it harder for you to be spotted.

Rule #10: Make sure the information you reveal is of the common knowledge variety. If there’s just a handful of you who know something, you might as well paint a giant bulls eye on your back, especially if you leak the information in a timely manner. Better to hold off for a couple of weeks until the network can’t be sure who it could have come from because newsrooms…well…they talk a lot. The only exception to this is if it’s highly classified/sensitive information…in which case you can’t leak it without fear of being caught no matter how long you wait. If you just must blab, insist that its off the record and tell the person you’re leaking to go find a few more sources to confirm.

If these rules all sound rather obvious, well…that’s the point. They are obvious. And yet not everyone follows them.

Schadenfreude…namely mine…

Forbes’ Janet Novack writes that Taxmasters…you know Taxmasters…that company that advertised ad nauseam on cable news and drove us all nuts…filed for bankruptcy and is stiffing CNN, MSNBC, and FNC for the ad bill. It may be mean but I call that karma. Now if Geico would just go under…(via J$)

TaxMasters, the heavily advertised “tax resolution” company that filed for bankruptcy last month, has left several big media companies, as well as its clients and law firms, holding an empty bag. In a court filing yesterday, TaxMasters listed TimeWarner’s CNN unit at its largest unsecured creditor, owed $2.6 million. Its second largest creditor is the Philadelphia based law firm of Blank Rome, owed $2.3 million.

NBC To Launch Investigation into Zimmerman 911 Call Editing…

The Washington Post’s Eric Wemple writes about an edited version of George Zimmerman’s 911 call which was played on NBC… (via Mediaite)

NBC told this blog today that it would investigate its handling of a piece on the “Today” show that ham-handedly abridged the conversation between George Zimmerman and a dispatcher in the moments before the death of Trayvon Martin. A statement from NBC:

“We have launched an internal investigation into the editorial process surrounding this particular story.”

Great news right there. As exposed by Fox News and media watchdog site NewsBusters, the “Today” segment took this approach to a key part of the dispatcher call:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.

(italics ICN’s)

Education and the Media

The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi contributes a story on Education and the media for American Journalism Review. In it he takes more than a few shots at Fareed Zakaria and NBC’s Education Nation…

Zakaria’s take, however, may be a perfect distillation of much of what’s wrong with mainstream media coverage of education. The prevailing narrative – and let’s be wary of our own sweeping generalizations here – is that the nation’s educational system is in crisis, that schools are “failing,” that teachers aren’t up to the job and that America’s economic competitiveness is threatened as a result. Just plug the phrase “failing schools” into Nexis and you’ll get 544 hits in newspapers and wire stories for just one month, January 2012. Some of this reflects the institutionalization of the phrase under the No Child Left Behind Act, the landmark 2001 law that ties federal education funds to school performance on standardized tests (schools are deemed “failing” under various criteria of the law). But much of it reflects the general notion that American education, per Zakaria, is in steep decline. Only 20 years ago, the phrase was hardly uttered: “Failing schools” appeared just 13 times in mainstream news accounts in January of 1992, according to Nexis. (Neither Zakaria nor CNN would comment for this story.)

Have the nation’s schools gotten noticeably lousier? Or has the coverage of them just made it seem that way?

(snip)

Current TV fires Olbermann…

Well this doesn’t quite qualify as your usual Friday evening news dump. The New York Times’ Brian Stelter writes about Keith Olbermann being fired by Current. What’s that leave? HLN and CNN? Bloomberg? Link.TV?

Current TV said Friday afternoon that it had terminated the contract of its lead anchor, Keith Olbermann, scarcely a year after he was hired to reboot the fledgling channel in his progressive political image.

Starting Friday night, the former New York governor Eliot Spitzer will take over Mr. Olbermann’s 8 p.m. time slot, according to a letter to viewers. His program will be titled “Viewpoint With Eliot Spitzer.”

Mr. Olbermann did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Current indicated that he had failed to honor the terms of his five-year, $50 million contract, giving the channel the right to terminate it.

Lawyers…I smell lawyers!

Why I Blog The Way I Do…

It may be a few years too late for this post but I still think it merits writing about what drives ICN and why I write about what I write about the way I write about it. Call it self-serving…call it informative…call it a waste of space. I need to set this marker so that I have something to point to the next time someone questions something I wrote…

The tagline for this blog is “Unvarnished News & Opinion on Cable News”. I didn’t write it but I’ve kept it since I became the sole blogger here over six years ago. But if I was going to alter that tagline I would alter it to “Unvarnished News & Opinion on the Mechanics of Cable News”. Cable news mechanics are what this blog is most about.

Cable news isn’t just a news broadcast. It is the end product of a series of decisions made by a lot of people. How those decisions are made and why they are made constitute the mechanics of cable news and is the aspect of the industry that I find most fascinating. How or why did a story get on air? Why is a network pushing one story? Why is a certain talent handling that story? Why are certain guests brought on the air? How is the network positioning itself? Does the public position match the actual output of the network? Why did a network president just say what they said? Why did a PR shop address an issue in the way they did? Who is being consistent in telling their story? Who just did a 180 on their story? Who just ducked an inconvenient fact that runs counter to the story they are trying to tell? Who just got hired? Who just got dropped? Who just got their prominence elevated? Who has the power? Who appears to have the real power? Who is being sincere? Who is being disingenuous? Who’s being fed? Who’s being blacklisted? Who gets special treatment? What are the real target demographics for a particular channel and which is being aggressively courted by the network?

Those are just some of the questions that I want to know the answer to. I hunt down patterns, inconsistencies, and contradictions and point them out for my readers to see. Because I’m independent and an outsider, I have the freedom to go where a lot of writers can’t go and say things they can’t say due to the restrictions and expectations placed on them by their shops or their own internal codes. And it has given this blog an edge you don’t see most places. The benefits of such a strategy are obvious but so too are the drawbacks.

Qualifications? What Qualifications?

Alexa Kravitz writes in The American Journalism Review about non-journalists vs. journalists with a decidedly MSNBC centric focus. Kravitz throws Phil Griffin’s own words back at him and interviews Eric Deggans, Gail Shister, Marvin Kalb, David Zurawik, and David Folkenflik. The mere fact that someone actually bothered to make the rounds of media writers/pundits, so to speak, to get a wide take on the subject qualifies this for must read status. Here’s my favorite part…

Some say since the cable shoutfests are so different from actual journalism, there’s no problem if non-journalists preside over them. Veteran broadcast journalist Ed Fouhy isn’t buying it.

“I don’t agree with the premise that viewers know that these are entertainment shows,” he says.

Zurawik agrees. “No, people don’t know that these are opinion shows during prime time,” he says. “And one of the reasons they don’t is because cable executives are lying their butts off and putting out ads trying to present these people as journalists. There isn’t a clear line between the two.”

Folkenflik says that the lack of clarity is unintentional. “They’re not trying to fool you into who’s doing what. I think they are being up front about it. But it’s not always clear to the public that there’s a difference.”

The problem for MSNBC is the blurred distinction between opinion shows and news programming. You see opinion hosts anchoring some political coverage on major campaign nights. In the 2008 election, for example, the definitively liberal Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews were put on to co-anchor the network’s news coverage.

Kravitz is on the right path but misses the elephant in the room…the subjugation of dayside straight news on MSNBC to political back and forth and POV programming, something no other cable news network has dared contemplate undertaking to this degree.

Layoffs at CNN…

TVNewser’s Alex Weprin writes about layoffs at CNN and why those layoffs are happening…

CNN laid off dozens of employees today in its two documentary units, TVNewser has learned.

In a statement, the channel says that while it will continue to produce in-house docs–such as the “In America” series–much of its long-form journalism will now come from outside production companies.

The reorganized unit will have one documentary team focused on producing and acquiring docs, and a second team dedicated to investigative reporting on weekdays.

The danger of using outside production company docs is the quality of the journalism…will it be up to CNN standards or will we start seeing things appear on CNN’s air which the network never would have let out on its air previously? We won’t know the answer to this for some time but I do worry about this.