Hollywood Reporter Undergoing Transformation

Image via WikipediaDecimated from staff cutbacks fueled by shrinking advertising lineage and battered by online competitors, including IndieWire.com, TheWrap.com, and Deadline.com, the five-time-a-week Hollywood Reporter is fighting back by converting itself into a slick, glossy large-format weekly magazine, according to a story in The New York Times.


Photo spreads, feature articles, and analytical stories about the dream industry, along with a Web site redesign and a focus on breaking news will be the order of the day for the new Hollywood Reporter. The printed daily version will be supplanted by a daily digital edition in PDF format.


Razorfish pocketed a tidy sum to redo the Reporter Web site, and plans are to boost the editorial staff to approximately 70 people, according to the Times article. Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to be able to cover a creatively and financially bankrupt industry responsible for 3D tripe such as Piranha.

Chi-town Press Gets a Makeover

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Say "Chicago journalist," and the image evoked is that of  The Front Page's rumpled ink-stained wretch Hildy Johnson, a shot glass of whiskey in one hand, and a Chicago Police Department (CPD)-issued press pass in the other.


According to The Chicago Reader, that image received a makeover when the Chicago City Council recently amended the ordinance covering CPD press passes.  Previously, the status symbol press badge was issued only to full-time employees of  "newspapers, press associations, newsreels and radio stations." Now, one is eligible to receive a press pass if engaged by a "newspaper or other periodical issued at regular intervals whether in print or electronic format."

Get me rewrite, baby--that encompasses freelance writers and bloggers. Moreover, the ordinance was amended to eliminate the fingerprinting requirement imposed in 2002 and remove the stipulation requiring journalists to be "of good moral character," an admission that such an ideal was anathema to journalists. Press pass candidates, however, must still undergo a background check by the FBI National Crime Information Center if they want to get their hands on a CPD press pass.

Freelance writers and part-time scribes must produce a letter from a news organization confirming that they are doing work for them to qualify for the police press card. As a one-time Chicago denizen toiling in the field of journalism while imbibing at Riccardo's and Billy Goat Tavern, "TUOL" views the press pass reform as an admission that with the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune both intimate with Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, the times they are a changin in the journalism profession.

KN DOE Turns Its Back on Journo Students

Image via WikipediaA dying field with insufficient prospects for job growth.
That's how the Kansas Department of Education views journalism, which means fewer vocational dollars for school journalism programs statewide beginning in the 2012-2013 school year, according to a story in the Topeka Capital Journal. Money from the Career and Technical Education (CTE) fund will not find its way to train prospective journalists based on the state DOE's review of labor market data.
Of course, the Kansas Board of Education a mere five years ago voted 6-4 to approve public school science standards that gave a boost to intelligent design and creationism at the expense of Darwin's theory of evolution, so "TUOL" hopes the state isn't a bellwether of a national trend.

Wash. Court Sides with Filmmaker Moore in Anti-SLAPP Suit

Image by shannonkringen via FlickrControversial filmmaker and political activist Michael Moore, 56, stands to receive $10,000 and attorneys' fees after a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington tossed invasion of privacy and misappropriation of likeness claims against him.

Magistrate Judge Karen Strombom's 17-page decision in Ken Aronson v. Dog Eat Dog Films, Inc. (Case No. C10-5293) applied for the first time Washington's revised anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) statute in ruling against Aronson, whose voice and image appeared in a 71-second snippet of Moore's Oscar-nominated documentary Sicko, which focused on the U.S. health care system.


Aronson's 1997 London footage of his friend Eric Turnbow sustaining a shoulder injury after walking on his hands appeared in Sicko without Aronson's knowledge or consent, though Turnbow executed a waiver. Aronson is heard singing Oh England Here We Go in the footage.


Copyright claims remain unresolved between the parties.  Washington was in the vanguard of anti-SLAPP legislation, though 28 jurisdictions have enacted such bills, which are intended to derail meritless lawsuits that threaten the exercise of free speech. 

CNN's Dazzling New Program Title for Spitzer & Parker Gabfest

Image via WikipediaCNN this week unveiled the name of the new Prime Time talk show featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker and former Democratic NY Gov. Elliot Spitzer debuting this fall  at 8 p.m. opposite Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.

CNN ("Creativity Not Necessary") reached back to come up with the title--drum roll, please--Parker Spitzer.
 Yeah, that's right.

Those of you who guessed: Parker Here, Client No. 9, nice try.

It's Not Easy Being Greene

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Billionaire real estate mogul Jeffrey Greene, who was bested in Florida's Democratic U.S. Senate primary race by Kendrick Meek, has filed a 55-page defamation lawsuit in Miami Dade Circuit Court against The St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald.


Greene alleges the defendants conspired to assassinate his character and diminish his chances of winning the primary by publishing stories that cast him in a negative light.  An article that appeared in the Herald concerning a Calif. businessperson subsequently indicted for mortgage fraud who was involved in an unrelated condo deal with Greene and a second article concerning alleged drug use and lurid partying by former boxing champ Mike Tyson aboard Greene's yacht underlie the defamation claim.

According to the plaintiff, both stories were false and he purportedly provided evidence to that effect to the Florida dailies pre-publication. Both papers did print a correction concerning the Tyson story.

To prevail on his claim, Greene must prove the defendants published the stories with actual malice, that is, knowing the stories were untrue or with reckless disregard about the truth or falsity of the articles.  Greene is seeking $250 million in compensatory damages (or about 10 times what he spent out of his own pocket to fund his campaign) and $250 million in punitive damages.


Time will tell, but political candidates successfully suing media outlets covering their campaigns for defamation is as rare an occurrence nowadays as apparently, losing gracefully.

Blocking the Sunshine in California

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The Associated Press reports that the California Assembly has tried to invoke a long-neglected rule requiring news media outlets to request permission from the Assembly Speaker's office before recording legislative sessions.


The rule affects print and broadcast journalists and legislators themselves, all of whom must get the nod from the Assembly Speaker's office before using audio or video recorders to capture legislative debate. Assembly Speaker John Perez has delayed enforcing the rule as news media outlets began to question it.

It's never a good idea in a free society to empower government officials to restrict coverage of their governance.

Calif. Solons Pop the Paparazzi

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The Sacramento Bee's CapitolAlert blog reports that A.B. 2479 is awaiting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature following a 41-13 vote by the California Assembly that may make news photographers' jobs a little bit harder to do.


The bill is intended to target paparazzi who are the bane of  celebrities, neither group of which is in short supply in sunny California. Assembly Bill 2479 subjects violators to civil lawsuits for false imprisonment if they physically harass individuals with their photographic or sound equipment.  The measure also imposes penalties for reckless driving in pursuit of a "visual image."

Legislators no doubt were contemplating the scenes played out on tabloid tv in which paparazzi surround a "helpless" celebrity in his or her vehicle, impeding the star's departure while they furiously record the celebrity's image.  It remains to be seen whether the bill would pass consitutional muster.

Juror Not Likely to Add Judge to Facebook Friends List

Image via CrunchBaseA judge has fined a juror $250 and ordered her to write an essay about the importance of a right to a fair trial after it was discovered that she sent a prejudicial Facebook message while still impaneled during the trial, according to an Associated Press story.

Credit the defense attorney's son for finding the posting on the Facebook page in which the seated juror said it was "gonna be fun to tell the defendant they're GUILTY." The judge kicked the Facebook fanatic off the jury and told her she had violated her oath as a juror (not to mention the rules of grammar concerning pronoun agreement).

The juror apologized to the court for her rush to judgment, but that didn't get her out of having to write the essay about the importance of the Sixth Amendment.  The juror is fortunate that her penchant for poking didn't result in her winding up in the pokey."TUOL" can't wait to read her essay:  " LOL. At my laptop. Judge not my bff. WTF?"

Mormon Media Makeover: Deseret News Slashes 43% of Editorial Staff

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The Deseret News, Utah's oldest continually publishing daily newspaper, this week cut 57 full-time and 28 part-time staffers, which constitutes 43 percent of its workforce,  including Editor Joe Cannon and Publisher Jim Wall.


According to reports in Editor & Publisher, rival Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News itself, the News' newsroom staff will be consolidated with its sister news operations at KSL television and radio. The move goes beyond re-assigning beat coverage and shifting emphasis from print to digital news. 

The Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune jointly operate MediaOne of Utah (presumably, "Mutual of Utah" sounded too much like an insurance co.), which handles advertising, distribution and printing for both papers, which are editorially independent. The News will create a new editorial advisory board, and has identified its first member--Harvard Business School Prof. Clayton M. Christensen--with an eye toward expanding the paper's scope and influence nationally. Also, the paper will introduce Deseret Connect, a web of non-staff reporters and editors to complement the editorial staff remaining in the newsroom. Reporters will focus on six areas of coverage in the new multimedia enterprise: family, financial responsibility, excellence in education, care for the needy, values in the media, and faith in the community.


The Deseret News is a subsidiary of the Deseret Management Corp., a for-profit entity owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (that's the Mormons, folks).

Team Coco Uncrisply Announces New Cable Show Title

Image via WikipediaForty-seven-year-old Brookline, Mass., native Conan O'Brien took to the Internet to announce via video the name of his new talk show that debuts on cable TV network TBS on November 8.

The show surprisingly will be called Conan.  That shouldn't upset NBC's legal department, which has imposed numerous restrictions on the red-headed comic since his ouster as host of The Tonight Show, but O'Brien has to keep his fingers crossed that the famous Barbarian who shares his moniker doesn't decide to enter the late-night talk show fray and trigger an epic trademark battle.

O'Brien is often clever, but his morose post-Tonight Show behavior ("I lost my dream job to Leno and only have $33 million in severance pay to show for it") has grown tiresome. TBS' pairing Conan with The George Lopez Show is the kind of double-barreled entertainment that makes "TUOL" long for a return to The Late Show movies of its youth, where a Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes, or Bowery Boys B-picture was always just a click away.

Given the limited cable audience TBS offers, another name change may soon follow Conan---Cancelled.

WP Sports Twit Mike Wise: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Image by Jeffrey Beall via FlickrWashington Post sports writer/columnist Mike Wise's ignoble online journalism experiment blew up in his face this week, resulting in a one-month suspension.

Testing his hypothesis that "anyone will print anything," the columnist Monday tweeted from his Mike Wiseguy account: "Roethlisberger will get five games, I'm told." For those of you who do not stay abreast of NFL scandals, the reference was to the severity of the penalty that may be imposed on Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, whom the league is expected to suspend based on allegations by a 20-year-old coed that he sexually assaulted her in a Georgia nightclub.

According to an account by Washington Post colleague, media critic Howard Kurtz, Wise fabricated the quote, which purportedly he intended to admit five minutes after sending  the tweet, but his Twitter account allegedly froze for about 40 minutes, unbeknownst to Wise, who was participating in his radio talk show on WJFK-FM. Ah, the drawbacks of multi-tasking.  His subsequent jokey tweet that the source of his Roethlisberger story was "a casino employee in Lake Tahoe," came too late, as numerous Web sites, such as The Miami Herald and NBC's ProFootballTalk, picked up the initial message, attributing it to Wise.

Wise sent an apologetic tweet, but his superiors at the Washington Post were not in a forgiving mood. Noting that the faux news scoop compromised the impartial news judgment that WP editorial staffers profess to have, management levied the one-month suspension.

Lost in the kerfuffle of the admittedly non-life-changing football news story is that Wise's instincts may have been faulty, but his premise was correct--people will print anything they see on the Web without doing the required journalism legwork.  "TUOL" is keeping its fingers crossed that The Washington Post and The New York Times' accounts of l'affaire Wise are not part of an early elaborate April Fool's ruse.

Beck's Bier

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TheBlaze(http://www.theblaze.com), the ubiquitous Glenn Beck's conservative news and opinion Web site, debuted Monday, one day after Beck's Restoring Honor rally White-out enshrouded Washington, D.C.


The Web site will be edited by former Breitbart TV co-founder Scott Baker.  Andrew Breitbart, of course, is the fellow behind the Shirley Sherrod and ACORN video scandal hoopla, so one would assume that Baker is skilled at overseeing the editing of  long videotapes into short incendiary video clips. Baker was an anchor for WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh for 13 years.

"Nothing Burns Hotter than the Truth" is the tagline for Beck's tangled Web entree. Beck said the flame image symbolizes a "burning truth" that is not consumed. It also can represent a destructive conflagration, but "TUOL" digresses.

Mediaite was the first site to report on Beck's latest project.  Today's home page of TheBlaze, besides Associated Press wire copy, includes stories headlined: HOAS Tread on Patriotic Symbols, NY Residents Don't Support Mosque at Ground Zero, Explicit Poetry GPS Phones Help Illegals and Ground Zero Imam: I've 'Always Been' a Jew and a Christian.

"TUOL" concedes that the Web site does represent a  technological advance over the blackboard, heretofore, Beck's preferred weapon of destruction.

UPDATE: FCC Petitions 2nd Cir. for Review of Indecency Standards Ruling

Image via WikipediaThe Federal Communications Commission has petitioned for a rehearing en banc by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit regarding the appellate court's July decision that the FCC indecency policy was unconstitutionally vague and violative of the First Amendment (See "TUOL" post 7/13/10).

The case, Fox Television v. FCC (Case Nos. 06-1760, 06-2750, & 06-5358) overturned the "fleeting expletives" FCC rule that subjected broadcasters to penalties for non-bleeped on-air expletives. Fox, CBS Broadcasting and others said the rule chilled 1st Amendment speech. U-2's Bono, Cher, and Nicole Ritchie at various times dropped F-bombs that were broadcast and resulted in fines.

A three-judge Second Circuit panel in July ruled the indecency policy under the Administrative Procedure Act [5 U.S.C. sec. 706(2)(A)] was arbitrary and capricious.  The FCC said in its petition that the ruling impedes the agency from enforcing federal statutory restrictions regarding indecent material and is seeking a rehearing of the case or that the full Second Circuit address the matter.




The FCC indecency restrictions cover the broadcast period from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. when children are most likely to be among viewers.

Midwife Delivers $1m Libel Suit to New York Magazine

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In Cara Muhlhahn v. Andrew Goldman & New York Media LLC (Case No. 10102846), a  Manhattan midwife is seeking $1 million in damages in a defamation suit filed in the Supreme Court of New York against New York magazine and a journalist over a 2009 article entitled "Extreme Birth."


The seven-page complaint alleges that the article "contained statements that were fabricated or based on unverified sources as well as allegations about which there were obvious reasons to doubt the accuracy or truth thereof." The plaintiff claims the article portrayed her as reckless. The defendants have filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, arguing the statements at issue were not susceptible to a defamatory meaning as they either constituted opinion or were accurate statements concerning the plaintiff's purported divergence from medical opinion.

The case has been written about on the Web sites of Jezebel and the  NY Observer.

CJR Uses FOIL to Get G-O-V Emails

Image by ianqui via FlickrApproximately 2,000 emails among the news media, former NY Gov. David Patterson's press flack Peter Kaufmann,  and deputy press secretary Melissa Shorenstein are the target of a lawsuit filed by Columbia Journalism Review under New York's Freedom of Information Law ("FOIL") [Pub. Off. Law Sec. 87 et seq.].

CJR reporter Clint Hendler (Disclosure: "TUOL"'s co-panelist on a discussion of anonymous bloggers on N.H. Public Radio's The Exchange 11/17/09,  http://www.nhpr.org/node/27862) originally sought the government emails following the "integrity"-based resignations of Kaufmann and Shorenstein in March 2009, concerning allegations that gubernatorial aide David Johnson was involved in a domestic violence incident. The governor's office has refused to produce the electronic correspondence, citing the reporter's privilege of NY's shield law[Civil Rights Law Art. 7, Sec. 79-h(a)(6)] and the presence of commercially sensitive information as the basis for withholding the emails.

A NY law firm is representing CJR pro bono.

A Lawsuit Facebook Doesn't 'Like'

Image via CrunchBaseAgence France-Presse reports that a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeks cash damages from social media behemoth Facebook for allegedly violating California law that prohibits commercially using minors to endorse products and services.


The lawsuit contends that parental or guardian consent is required before minors can click on Facebook's thumbs-up  "Like" icon to endorse online advertising content.  An attorney whose firm participated in filing the action accused Facebook of deriving illegal profits by charging advertisers for the use of minors' names and photographs. State law holds that minors cannot give legal consent.


Facebook plans vigorously to contest the lawsuit that it dismisses as meritless.

With Staff Cuts, USA Today Looks to Tomorrow

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeAnother 130 positions will be slashed from the business and editorial side this fall at Gannett Co.'s USA Today, a 9 percent reduction of the McLean, Va.-based daily's 1,500-member work force, according to an Associated Press story.

The AP account says USA Today, the nation's second largest newspaper after The Wall St. Journal, will shift its emphasis from its print edition to platforms including mobile devices, IPads, the Internet, and other digital forums. The re-organization will involve creating "content rings," including USA Today Sports, Breaking News, Your Life, Travel, Investigative, Tech, Personal Finance, Washington/Economy, National, World, Aviation, Autos, Entertainment and Environment/Science.

Gannett Co.'s stock has plunged nearly 80 percent over the past four years as circulation of its flagship daily has declined to an average 1.83 million compared to 2.3 million in 2007. Ad pages are off nearly 50 percent from four years ago.(See "TUOL" posts 6/24/10 & 2/12/10.)

On the positive side, the thinner USA Today slips more easily under chain hotel guest room doors nowadays.

Bloggers Find Philly Taxing

Image via WikipediaPhiladelphia CityPaper reports that the City of Brotherly Love is not showing much love toward bloggers by requiring them to fork over $300 for a business privilege license.

The Philadelphia Dept. of Revenue (DOR) sent out scads of letters to bloggers informing them of the need for the license and advising them that any profits their blogs generate (snicker, snicker) are subject to taxation. Irrespective of the amount of revenue, if any, actually received, the willingness of bloggers to accept ads qualifies them as businesses in the eyes of the DOR.

Sounds like the makings of another revolution in Philadelphia.

U. Colo. May Shutter J-School

Image via WikipediaThe Boulder Daily Camera reports that the Univ. of Colorado may pull the plug on its traditional School of Journalism and Mass Communication ("SJMC").

The University's j-school presently enrolls 647undergrads, 58 master's students and 26 doctoral candidates in its journalism program. The SJMC boasts 28 full-time faculty members, and approximately 30 instructors and 13 staffers. Were the regents to vote to shut down the SJMC, tenured faculty who did not retire or resign would have to be re-assigned to another academic department and retrained if necessary, but adjuncts would likely experience layoffs.

The Daily Camera reports that Chancellor Phil DiStefano has officials reviewing the school under the regents' discontinuance policy.  In any case,the school would remain open until current journalism enrollees complete their degree programs.

Under consideration is a restructuring that would better prepare students for workplace entry into digital journalism. The SJMC's external advisory committee has recommended closing the school and shifting some of its programs to the Alliance for Technology, Learning & Society Institute to further that goal. Also under study is merging the j-school with other disciplines to open a broader "school of information."