What a difference almost two years makes

It was back on Feb. 13, 2005, that Stew Rieckman, executive editor of the Oshkosh Northwestern, derided the Oshkosh Community News Network as the "Oshkosh Participatory Journalism Experimental Free Press of The Future."

On Sunday we learned that the Northwestern intends to supplant OCNN with NCNN: the Northwestern Community News Network.

I'm not sure how to react.

On the one hand, I think the Northwestern/Gannett has the resources to pull off what OCNN was not able to do. And I think there can be some good that comes of that.

On the other hand, I don't think this is the highest and best use of the resources of the biggest newspaper company in the country.

Participatory journalism as a grassroots movement by groups and individuals who are not satisfied with the status quo makes sense to me. Participatory journalism as a cash machine by companies with stockholders who are not satisfied with their profit levels is a different kind of a thing.

I think one of the goals of all alternative media, including blogs and independent Web sites, is to goad the mainstream media into doing more, into being more accurate and yet also more ambitious in reporting the news. I can't say I see that happening here.

In any case we are now in a new phase. We'll see if this one lasts for more than two years.

Nicely done video from the Northwestern

The Northwestern publishes some of its first video on its Web site today.

It's well done.

You can question the choice of prep sports as the focus of this technology, and I'm not crazy about the format, Windows Media Player.

But the possibilities are very interesting, and if local advertisers can be sold on sponsoring such videos (in a way that doesn't drive away users), newspaper Web sites may have a way forward.

Stay tuned.

Gannett threatens reporters union

In Indianapolis, the company apparently wants its editorial workers to write advertisements that look like news articles, what are called "advertorials."

If it doesn't get the answer it wants from the Newspaper Guild, Gannett says it will take work away from union members and prevent them from working on its new "Information Center."

This doesn't have a direct effect in Oshkosh, since the Northwestern's newsroom is not unionized. But it's scary that Gannett doesn't see the danger in blurring the line between news and advertising.

Or maybe it's just scary that Gannett no longer sees the need to pretend to respect the line between news and advertising.

The future of news (part 342)

In about six months or so, we will know a lot more about the future of news. By that time there should be early returns from some of the experiments that are getting under way in the news biz.

From Washington comes news that the Web startup headed by two former Washington Post political reporters has a new name and some new hires. The new hires include Roger Simon, a very amusing and insightful political reporter who passed through the newsroom at The Baltimore Sun when I was there a couple of decades ago. I didn't know him personally, but I remember that many of his columns were laugh-out-loud funny even when they were taking on serious topics.

The new name for the Web site is "thepolitico.com." And the question I have is whether there are enough people with enough interest in politics to keep the site going. I doubt it.

In my view political coverage is the core of journalism. But it is only the core, and not enough to build an audience around. That's one of the reasons why newspapers have diversified into so many other things, froms sports to comics to cooking to nightlife, etc. A great newspaper is great in part because it attracts readers for a few of these things and then shifts their attention to others.

At thepolitico, the test that will be carried out over the next six months or so is whether a Web site devoted primarily to politics can attract enough readers and advertisers to sustain itself. Can the contributors to the site make politics interesting enough (and simple enough) for ordinary readers to get hooked?

As I said, I am skeptical. On the other hand, there are enormous sums of money at stake in Washington, and traditional political reporting does not do a very good job of illuminating this situation. If thepolitico becomes a truly authoritative source of exclusive insights about politics, then I can imagine a scenario where it becomes the place to be for corporations and other interest groups that want to use the site to speak to the political elite. In that case, there could be a goodly flow of advertising.

But the problem with that scenario is that special interest groups would prefer to do their speaking out of the public limelight, and so I'm not sure that will pan out.

It's also possible that thepolitico will find a way to generate exclusive information from database analysis that it could sell to subscribers, using the Web site, and newspaper and TV appearances mostly for promotional purposes. Could happen. But I remain doubtful.

One extremely important advantage for thepolitico is that it will not be saddled with the legacy costs of print distribution. At the same time, it will face an infinite number of competitors on the Web.

Meanwhile back in Oshkosh, the Northwestern has revealed the names of those competing to become community columnists. They are:

Mary O. Ross

Kelly Schwegl – former Merrill Middle School principal, active Propel Oshkosh member

Dani Stolley – Also of Propel; UWO Foundation employee

Courtney Lasky – Also of Propel

Kevin McGee – UWO economy professor and former Oshkosh Common Councilor.

Wendy Falk – A North High School English teacher and advisor of the NorthStar, the student newspaper; participant in Northwestern forums.

Mary Hiles – worked as a scriptwriter for American Family Insurance and writer/editor at UW-Madison's Center for Health Sciences, 17 years was director of publications for UW-Oshkosh, wrote the Oshkosh Sesquicentennial Musical: "The Fountain of Life," has a PH.D. in literature/Renaissance drama…

Robert Meyer– A regular letter writer

Karl Stein – Omro resident

David Hayford – former finance column writer for the Business News of Green Bay; regular letter to the editor contributor.

Nancy Leipzig – V.P. of business development for Clarity Care.

Bob Knudsen –Manager of The Magnet, former college radio show host

Donna Lohry – A Winnebago County Board supervisor

Marc White – A drum teacher/muscian from Oshkosh; regular letter to the editor contributor and participant in Northwestern forums

John Lemberger – UW O professor in the college of education and human services; regular letter to the editor contributor.

Polly Briley – former columnist, political activist, former Assembly candidate.

No knock on any of these folks, but why would you pay money to read something that you could hear from them over a beer at your favorite local eatery? (Of course, many people are not going to pay money to read their columns, because they will be freely available on the Web.)

And what will make their columns anything more than extended letters to the editor?

Where will the Northwestern's new-found determination to be "hyperlocal" take us?

We'll know more in six months.

Who owns the Oshkosh Northwestern?

I don't mean: Who owns the company? I mean: Who owns the name?

It turns out that the name Oshkosh Northwestern is not owned here in Oshkosh, and it isn't owned in McClean, Va., either, which is the headquarters address of Gannett Co. Inc., the country's largest newspaper owner and the parent of the Northwestern.

No, the owner of the Oshkosh Northwestern name is Media West - GMP Inc., a firm that is based in Reno, Nev. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Media West applied for a trademark on the name in 2003 and got the trademark a year later.

So why does a Nevada company own the name of our local newspaper? From all appearances, it's part of Gannett's strategy to avoid paying corporate income taxes.

Here's a comment that appeared in Forbes magazine a couple of years ago:

While editorials in Gannett Co.'s flagship USA Today criticize corporate tax breaks, the nation's largest newspaper publisher has cut its effective state tax rate over eight years by a third, adding maybe 10 cents to 2004 per-share earnings of $4.92. One ploy: Gannett set up Media West, a subsidiary in state-corporation-tax-free Nevada that, federal trademark records show, owns names of dozens of Gannett properties nationwide. Gannett doesn't deny its papers pay Media West "royalties" to use their logos, cutting taxable income in their higher-tax home states.

All of this makes an interesting backdrop for today's editorial in the Northwestern complaining about how average taxpayers are hurt by unfair corporate tax strategies.

One would have to be very cynical, even more cynical than I, to think that Gannett has developed a strategy to get it both ways--make populist pleas in the newspaper as a way of attracting readers and then burn those same customers by using fancy tax schemes to maximize profits.

Or maybe not....

At least students know what to do about plagiarism

Student journalists reacted swiftly to the discovery last week that a top editor at the Badger Herald had engaged in plagiarism. The incident was thoroughly investigated, and the editor got a swift boot.

This contrasts sharply with the way UW Oshkosh handled plagiarism at its Writing Center a few years back.

A-T getting lots of attention

The Advance-Titan was cited today in a couple of media blogs, including Romenesko, probably the single most widely read Web site amoung U.S. journalists.

The article drawing so much attention featured Jim VandeHei and his plans to move from print to cyberspace.

WaPo reports on Gannett changes

The recent changes we've seen at the Northwestern are part of a national shift at Gannett properties. As to be expected with experiments, the initial results are uneven.

See what The Washington Post says here.