That's Capital

The State of LA’s Media

That’s Capital Topic: Media Economics

 

Los Angeles

has become an increasingly complicated media market. Television, especially news coverage, spans a broadcasting market for too motley and sprawled to communicate a coherent message. Radio continues to shine; with all that time spent in cars, people would gnaw their left arms off if we didn’t have something to listen to. And print… *sigh*… print has fallen on truly hard times.

Let’s start at the top or the center if you will: The Los Angeles Times.  Since scooping up a clutch of Pulitzers in 2004, the paper seems hell-bent-for-leather to show that defeat really can be snatched from the jaws of victory.

Here's a quick overview of the latest mishandled and misconceived gambit at the Times: the guest editorial turn with the Sunday Op-Ed Section. Given the importance of Hollywood in LA, it seemed like a pretty good idea to have well known director Brian Glazer on board as the Guest Editor... until it turned out that the gig was lined up through romantic connections.  You can check out the sordid details here and here.

  

And it’s not just a matter of tabloid-sheet scandal that’s damaged the paper. Some of the problem is good-ol’-fashioned incompetence.

Exhibit Number Two: Michael Kinsley messed up the Op-Ed pages with ill-conceived experiments like “Wikitorials.” 

Exhibit Number Three: Dean Baquet, who took over as Editor in July of 2005, got kicked to the curb by November of the following year.  During his time “in charge,” he and his overseers with the Tribune Company haggled and bickered, but as far as I could tell, very little real editing got done. When he left the LA Times he took over as The New York Times Washington Bureau Chief. Talk about falling upward.

 

For Exhibit Number Four I simply direct the reader’s attention to the paper itself. Or at least, what is left of it.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

You can follow more on the disintegration of the LA Times at LA Observed, written and edited by Kevin Roderick. This blog’s mix of dish and analysis on LA’s media has made it one of the more indispensable news outlets in town.

Sam Zell bought Tribune, which owns the paper, in March of this year. Given that he put over $8 billion dollars into the deal, many of us see his purchase as a sign that new energy will come to the paper. (Many others see more cost-cutting; read: further disintegration.)

We’ve also heard that he might sell off the paper as a standalone operation to a local buyer. Perhaps this person or group will revitalize the paper. But I’m not holding my breath. The most likely candidates, Eli Broad and David Geffen, may well make the right moves, but I do not consider either one a saint. Furthermore, neither has an especially broad vision of LA’s identity. More than anything else, LA needs a media outlet that embraces the full-on, sometimes-hard-to-like, surprising messiness of the city.

In this regard, The Times has fallen short. This is hardly a new trend. It certainly predates 2000, when the Tribune Company bought the paper.  In spite of The Times’ shortcomings, though, we had alternatives: I know many folks who are about ten or fifteen years older than I am who still lament the closing of the Herald Examiner, which had a particularly strong City Desk (at least according to those who wax nostalgic for the paper).

By the time I started reading the news in the 1980s, the LA Weekly and The LA Reader provided real alternatives to The Times.  A few other alternative rags have come and gone since including New Times, and most recently, The LA Alternative Press, which included a solid column on local politics by Marc Haefele.   LA City Beat (along with the Valley Beat and the Pasadena Weekly, which are pretty much the same operation) continues to roll along by serving the San Fernando Valley suburbs more intensively than the other weeklies. It seems to work for the paper. 

A number of outlets serve the Black market, including The Wave, Our Weekly , The LA Watts Times, and The Los Angeles Sentinel. And LA is also home to a rich group of non-English papers, most visibly La Opinion.

 

And then there are all the suburban papers like The LA Daily News, The Pasadena Star Tribune, The Daily Breeze, The Press Telegram, and others, which focus on particular suburban zones. In this case, The San Fernando Valley, The San Gabriel Valley, The South Bay, and Long Beach and the Mid-Cities.

For the most part, though, these papers – focused as they are on the “alternative” segment, a particular language or ethnic group, or a particular clutch of suburbs – do not provide the wide-angle view of LA by their very nature. 

Even though the LA Weekly is technically in business, it has fallen on especially hard times since being sold to New Times out of  Phoenix. Leading up to and away from this event, many of the Weekly’s best writers bailed. By the time New Times hired Jill Stewart to oversee the news operation, she didn't have to worry about executing a makeover; it had been accomplished through attrition. Jon Wiener recently lamented the undead status of the LA Weekly in The Nation, noting that the papers has shed its progressive politics in favor of more style and entertainment coverage.

In fairness, though, the Weekly scored its first Pulitzer for the magnificent food columns of Jonathan Gold. BTW, Gold’s columns go way beyond food criticism: they serve as the best guide to exploring and understanding Los Angeles from end-to-end offered by any media outlet. We need more of this kind of connection to the city.

Granted, LA isn’t known for its great publications. But this combination of scandal, incompetence, and unimaginative management only makes a bad situation that much worse.

--

So what to do? Well, the founder of the LA Weekly, Jay Levin jumps into the fray with a new glossy, RealTalk LA, aimed at the cosmopolitan part of LA’s culture.

Who knows if this will work. It’s a tall order for a few reasons: this audience hasn’t developed the habit of reading about itself (mostly because LA publications summarily ignore this slice of the local culture). This, in turn, means that this audience is hard to define and may well be off the radar of advertisers and market research firms. As we say in the social sciences: if you aren’t counted, you don’t count. And I don’t see much evidence that market analysis has figured out how to count this motley, hard-to-pigeonhole subculture.

I picked up the first issue of the mag and enjoyed the style of it. Articles on Ozomotli and local radio/public affairs hostess Dominique DiPrima give it a decidedly local flavor, while trying to take the reader beyond what one already knows about LA. In essence, the magazine tries to help the reader “connect the dots,” which is something that other media do so little of.  But will the audience be large enough to sustain the expenses? Ozo is great, but still a bit “nichy”; Dominique DiPrima may well have the best talk radio program in LA, but it comes on at 4:00 AM on KJLH, which is dominated by the other Urban Stations in the area, Power 106 and The Beat.

Mr. Levin’s efforts attracted the attention of the Christian Science Monitor, which seems to be as skeptical as I am about the whole affair.

But what I feel that the Monitor does not is hope. In spite of the advertisers being a step behind in how they view LA, and how Angelenos view themselves, I hope that the media market here will support a publication that looks on the diverse, hard-to-get-a-handle-on nature of LA with affection rather than confusion, suspicion, or even derision. LA badly needs a voice – either popular or professional – that does what seems to come naturally in other towns where roots run deeper and the citizens have more of a stake and an understanding of what happens in their backyards and beyond.

After all, what are the media really worth? It’s a tough question, largely because the media refer to the environment around them, and because they don’t produce tangible outputs. But media which build a sense of identity, connection, and understanding can transform a place.

Realizing these goals can be thwarted by the drive to maximize profits. A handful of news operations have managed to yoke what can be done with good editorial to attracting the kinds of readers that advertisers want to reach, but we’ve seen very little of this in LA.

This goes way beyond simple economic analysis; it cuts right to the quick of how to edit the media, how to connect what the media do to a coherent audience, how to explain this to advertisers, and how to manage the operations day-to-day functions. That’s a serious bit of juggling.

Alas, here in LA, so many balls have hit the floor that it will take years to repair the damage. The blogosphere provides life-support in the meantime, including the aforementioned LA Observed, Metroblogging LA , Media Bistro, LA Voice, LA Indy Media, City Watch LA (which includes Marc Haefele's insightful contributions to political reportage) now , and others. But none of these can pull people together as well as a mainstream media outlet that does its job the right way. In the meantime, we blog, we observe the city, and pay attention. And hope that the worm will turn.

 

To the WSJ Staff: Walking (Out) A Mile in Labor’s Shoes

That’s Capital Topic: Media Economics
 

So Rupert Murdoch has his eye on Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal and the WSJ’s staff ain’t havin’ it. So they walk out. My oh my, the irony and the righteousness are so thick you’d need a good samurai sword to cut both.

 

Don’t get me wrong: the WSJ writers have plenty to worry about. Murdoch’s political views aren’t so much of a concern – after all, it’s not like the WSJ is a leftwing rag – but his views go beyond just plain Conservativism. Seriously, when he was asked about his Conservativism by an interviewer, he corrected the chap by describing himself as “an arch-conservative.” Even that isn’t the greatest concern here; it’s Mr. Murdoch’s management style that worries WSJ staffers.

 

Murdoch has earned a reputation as a micromanager. He’s been known to call newsrooms to find out who wrote, edited, and produced stories (especially those that ruffled his feathers). For a staff of writers known for their professionalism and skill, this kind of second-guessing will not go down well.

 

Then there’s the whole problem of where and how the WSJ will fit into the Newscorp empire. Anything I say about this is speculative so I won’t dwell on it, but I’d expect his purchase of the WSJ to be about expanding the scope and diversity of his media holdings, rather than trying to integrate the WSJ into what, say, FOX News does or says. There may be some interplay, but if there is, I’d expect that the WSJ would be the source of stories and investigative work. In the long run this may well improve the quality of reporting at FOX News and with newsrooms at Fox’s owned and operated (O&O) stations. 

 

Even though Murdoch has a well-earned reputation as a micromanager, he has also earned a reputation as being one of the shrewdest and most forward-looking of all executives in media over the last twenty years. It seems apt that he owns FOX; he certainly qualifies as being crazy/clever like one. And because he is clever, he may not subject the WSJ to his usual meddling. Don’t get me wrong; Murdoch hasn’t suddenly become a Buddha and let go of his ego. Rather, he’s loyal to his bottom line and even he can see that tampering with the WSJ will destroy the paper’s credibility, its brand, and ultimately, lead to an exodus of writers. Without those three things the paper will not be worth much and it will not be able to command the premium ad rates and almost unique position in the online news world that it currently enjoys. This latter point is especially important; with readership for print declining, and with more readers using online access for their news, Murdoch will want to maintain and nurture WSJ.com. It’s ability to charge for subscribers online, as well as downloads, means it has developed an exceedingly high-value and almost unique online user base. Advertisers cover this kind of truly committed, high-end, and verifiable audience. I don’t think Mr. Murdoch will want to kill the goose that is laying golden eggs. (Although if he did, he would not be the first executive to shoot himself in the foot.)

 

Through all this I’ve felt more than a bit bemused. Don’t get me wrong; I care deeply about maintaining well written, well edited papers like the WSJ. Moreover, the WSJ reports on business and economics, something most other media outlets don’t do nearly as well. I’m glad they are standing up and protesting. It’s their right and prerogative. It’s also the right thing to do in the situation.  But given their fierce defense of the prerogatives of management and rather tepid support for labor, there is a certain “chickens coming home to roost” aspect to all this. And now that the shoe is on the other foot – or rather, now that the shoe is on their feet – what will they say about the impact of mergers and acquisitions on rank-and-file workers? Will they use their bully pulpit to question the rationale of liberal policies of ownership accumulation even in media, where having multiple voices and points of view acts on society in important and special ways? 

 

Clearly, the staff at the Journal has two things that most rank-and-file workers lack and these two weapons may allow them to defend themselves more successfully than most workers can. First, they have considerable information (and informational access) on their situation. Being informed means they can better assess where and how to push back. Second, they have voice. In fact, they have voice and a bullhorn attached to it. And by making noise they may be able to get Murdoch to change his mind, or at least, change his behavior from what it has been in the past.

 

But beyond all this, I wonder if the WSJ writers might begin to identify a bit more closely with the laborers they write about when they cover the story of a company that is on the block or when a corporate raider swoops in to grab desired assets. I hope they do, not because I’m a big fan of labor (but I’m even less of a fan of management), but rather, so that one of our foremost voices on business and business decision-making might take on a more “fair and balanced” (oops, did I just say that?) view of business and the impact of executive decisions, especially in merger and acquisition negotiations. I hope that this happens, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the WSJ’s writers to beat the drum for anyone beside themselves.

 

Online Selling, Online Connections, Online Roadmaps

 

 

That’s Capital Topic: Media Economics

The trends regarding online selling being more flat, open, and personal seem to mirror well developed trends in music and porn. This isn’t said to make light of how broad these trends have become. Porn has a long history of being at the forefront of innovation in the use of media technology; this goes all the way back to using early printing press technology to make “adult” storybooks. And the widespread distribution of music by “amateurs” through digital aggregators such as CD Baby and conduits such as Kazaa foreshadowed how other media (like movies and television) could be accessed. For that matter, blogging as a way of creating, distributing, and consuming news and information fits right in the mix with these other evolving markets.

 

Two elements that seem important, but which the Times article didn’t address completely: the importance of “authenticity” and trust. That is, getting a face-to-face experience with someone who is “just like you” may make more sense than going for something that is slicker, but more glib, and possibly, more vacuous. This is an important aspect of the popularity of amateur porn as well as music made by a guy you can see in a bar or a church down the street. Especially when it comes to music, we think that amateurs focus on music and connecting with the audience; “making it big” and all the accoutrements that comes with it don’t matter as much as they do for big stars who have to keep record companies and an army of lawyers happy. And because we believe that this amateurs or small-time professional make something more authentic, we trust it more deeply.

 

There’s something else that the Times, and a lot of other writers in the popular media, missed over the last ten years as online selling has taken hold in our economy: it was never going to replace bricks-and-mortar retail. The best of the writers following this story focused on market segmentation: which persons, under which circumstances, will use online retail? I think we’re finally coming around to answering this question. Dell has finally figured out that for all the cost advantages of online-only retailing and distribution, they will never reach anything close to the masses of people that they can reach by going through bricks-and-mortar product distribution in addition to the online environment. Borders, REI, Sears, Best Buy, and others have rightly figured out that it’s better to be wherever a given consumer might find you: online or in-person. That is, make it easy for the customer to find you and your product and you’re more likely to make the sale.

 

Distributors of media (music, movies, television) take note: make your work available in a number of different channels. Make it easy to find, easy to access, and easy to recommend and you will see popularity grow to heretofore unknown heights.

 

So what part of the market will online marketing dominate? A clue comes from one of persons profiled in the NY Times article who wears large shoes. In other words, hard to find items. This is something I can tell you all about because my tastes in music run toward the obscure. Since this is the case, I am much more likely to find the music I want to buy online than in a store. (The exception here is the truly amazing Amoeba Music outlet in

Hollywood

.)

 

Because photography gives you an end product just as good and useful as what you get in-person (the picture), it shares some characteristics with porn and music. And as we’ve seen in those to media businesses, the top end of the market is being whittled away at (quickly) and the lower and middle segments of the make have grown prodigiously. So while the times focuses on the latter point, it might be useful to note what has happened at the upper end of the market, including the overhaul produced by such services as Getty Images and Pictopia.  These sites use a totally different model from what works in bricks-and-clicks: they don’t go to wherever the consumer is looking; rather, they create a one-stop-shop clearinghouse that allows consumers – mostly media outlets – to find what they need in quickly and reliably in one place. Either way, though, it’s about convenience.

 

In both cases, photographers need to adopt new models for distribution. A few established photographers will; many will not. However, among budding photographers or those who are still learning the trade, using these tools will be as ordinary as a teenager using the computer to listen to music before using a turntable.

 

And as these technologies and the content they gather, distribute, and warehouse proliferate, we’ll need more sophisticated, simple, flexible, and intuitive tools for accessing just what we want when we want it. Online environments do this well in some cases (the microstock Photography companies mentioned in the Times article are one example), but are a total failure in others. (Classical music searches on Amazon are beyond a mess.) Mahalo Guides seems like a promising approach – combining the brute force power of machine-based search tools with human intuition and judgment. Further development of the approach seems love overdue, especially in the music and movies realm. As these tools improve, and become more widespread, more of us will be able to fulfill our consuming desires in whatever environment (online, in-person, or bricks-and-clicks) we prefer.

 

Palestinian Meltdown and the Cheap Payoff of Violence

I have a few things I’d like to respond to regarding Jonathan’s comments on the Palestinian meltdown.

One:
Being really good at fighting with or complaining about one’s enemies has very little to do with being able to run anything, from basic institution building, to the more vague but equally powerful effort required to build a sense of common purpose among a people. Not to mention developing ways of resolving differences. That’s as true for couples – who may fall madly in love, but if they can’t figure out how to deal with their darkness, they are doomed – as it is for a people/nation. I think this has been a fundamental problem in Palestinian politics and how Palestinians organize and express power. And even though Fatah is the more direct descendant of the PLO, Hamas seems to suffer these shortcomings just as deeply. Neither apple fell far from the tree; perhaps there is too much of a sense of identity and purpose tied up in being the underdog, the fighter, the rebel. But as long as both sides hold onto this image of themselves and how it underscores the Palestinian sense of purpose and meaning, they will continue to be incapable of leading efforts toward real political, social, and economic development; developing human infrastructure, institutions, and systems; and managing difficulties and differences. In other words, I see the shadow of Arafat and his cronies casting a pall over the region to this day and for some time to come. And just as Arafat did, both sides are quick to cover up their ineptitude and internal squabbling with complaint and conflict. There’s nothing quite so effective to rally a people like a fight. (See Karl Rove Playbook for more.) The problem is that it keeps distracting everyone from the deeper questions as to what a people does after the fighting; it focuses the attention of a people as “against” something. Definitions based on external cues, especially reputation, take precedence. This is a very dangerous road to go down. At some point, one has to look within to become more fully developed. I think the same goes for a nation.

In some sense, getting into fights, mostly with the Israelis but now with each other, has become an addiction. And like most addictions, all this fighting and fussing anesthetizes some sort of pain and deflects attention from issues that need addressing. But addictions are hard to get out of because in many ways they work. And for Hamas, the last two weeks has been successful, at least on a superficial level: they shouldered their way clear of what they seemed to regard as Fatah’s/Abbas’ paternalism and claimed Gaza as their own. Fatah, gained something as well; looking like the more reasonable of two bad options. Of course, none of this addresses the need to build physical, social, or cultural infrastructure. In fact, all of these things are in tatters.

 

Two:
So now what? Frankly, I’m suffering from a certain degree of MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) trying to figure out what’s going on. And what to do about all this. But two things come to mind straightaway. Reducing the capacity for violence and increasing the incentives for cooperation.

Although it falls into the “easier said than done” category of things, I have to say that as a world culture we have to do something about the proliferation of guns on this planet. The

US

bears particular responsibility here because we produce so much weaponry. We share this special responsibility with our old Cold War nemesis, the

Soviet Union

– these days,

Russia and the former Soviet republics. That’s because the 1947 model Automat Kalashnikov (that’s AK-47 in common parlance), the worlds most popular killing machine, comes from both

Russia and the former Soviet Republics.

Since the AK-47 is about to hit 65, why not create an effort to retire it? Sure, everyone is making far too much money off of sales and distribution of this weapon, but is there a way to reduce demand or to tie profits to costs? I can think of two ways to do this: make weapons manufacturers liable for some of the damage created by what they’ve manufactured (in the same way that cigarette companies can be liable for the harm they produce); or, to beef up enforcement against illegal arms shipments to the point that the costs of being in the business go up. This would require developing countries to actively put pressure on weapons manufactures, the UN, Interpol, and others. Again, we’re back to the realm of longshots. Too many entrenched interests make too much money off of the arms trade, legal and illegal.  Once again, the weakest seem to be destined to end up under the wheels of “progress”, or at least, someone else’s agenda.Three:

The second point goes back to something Jonathan and I talked about ages ago: creating ties that bind between the various states in the

Middle East

The Middle East Regional Cooperative Program (MERC)  mentioned in the Jerusalem Post article is one such effort.  We need a lot more of these efforts, from shared low/no interest investment pools to interlocking production systems that provide incentives for firms in different countries to cooperate creating and distributing various products and services. If the firms cooperate, then politicians, who want to see constituents with jobs, will support these efforts. Little by little everyone in the area can learn that they have more to gain though cooperation rather than conflict.

 

And even though Jonathan may want to wash my mouth out with soap for drawing this analogy, I think something can be learned about the problem of building ties that bind by revisiting the ways in which South Africans dismantled apartheid. I remember reading a fabulous piece in the New Yorker years ago about how middle tier legal administrators and bureaucrats in South Africa kept meeting with each other beginning in the 1900s, getting to know each other, and generally creating open channels that higher-ups like Mandela and de Klerk could use when high-level talks broke down. No such ongoing effort seems to be in play in

Palestine

Or if it is, it’s not being actively sustained, which limits its impact. The US and the EU and some collection of Arabic states (who have talked a good fight but have shown little initiative or imagination in grappling with the Palestinian issue) need to create a roundtable that meets on a schedule, and places various diplomats, bureaucrats, and business persons in the Occupied Territories, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, into ongoing contact with one another. Spreading a little money over it (in the form of venture capital funds, low/no interest loans, grants, and reduced tariffs and customs barriers) might grease the wheels just enough to produce a bit of momentum.

Will any of this work? Given recent experience, probably not. Too many persons seem too inured to revenge and retaliation, punishment and petulance, to trust, or more simply, to listen. A sense of meaning, purpose, and cultural connection seems to be built around strife; a point I made earlier in this post. That’s a scary place to be because it means that broaching the subject of peace requires a reordering of priorities and values that go very deep. At least, this is true with the leadership and the actual fighters on both sides. For them, the payoff to making trouble gives them a sense of value and meaning. This will consistently trump, or at least undermine, potential economic benefits.

However, I’d say that “just plain folk” want to enjoy the pedestrian pleasures of peace: a decent job, good food, a comfortable environment, spending time with family and friends, and so forth. In the On-Point program on the current conditions in Palestine, both Taghreed El-Khodary and Hanan Ashrawi say that both sides have failed the Palestinian people. This seems obvious to those of us who believe that war is necessarily a failure of more productive options. I take a sense of hope from this, though: the common people may well decide that they’ve had enough of corruption and belligerence and move in a new direction. Such thinking seems to have gained increasing traction in Israel, but in both Israel and in the Palestinian Territories, leadership on both sides seem unwilling to steer the ships of state in this potentially more productive direction.

Four:

Which brings us back around to

Israel

In a pretty heated email exchange between a Palestinian friend of mine, Jonathan, a local "pan-Mediterraneanist" I know, and myself, it was clear that the Palestinians are just plain worn out with

Israel

many Jews are worn out with

Israel,

but some of us are still holding out hope for reform. Or maybe it’s just a matter of trying not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But bringing pressure to bear on Israel must be done. Broad-based boycotts – something advocated by the pan-Mediterraneanist in the aforementioned email exchange – may be imprecise, but some sort of cost has to be attached to the brutality and thoughtlessness that seem to be part of daily business.

 

What I’d really like to see is an American administration with the stones to withhold funds going to Israel until 1) peace negotiations resume; 2) concrete steps toward real Palestinian autonomy are in place and are acted on; 3) deadlines are set for relinquishing control of the

Occupied Territories

This seems like a mirage right now, but I don’t see how any long-term stability can be realized without taking these steps.

Five:

Moving forward – that is, moving toward peace – will require, just as Jonathan notes, movement. Do something that leads in that direction. Right now I don’t have the feeling that anyone takes this seriously. Abbas is making noises about peace talks, but I don’t see that he has the moxie or pull to make it happen. But at least he’s got the invitation out there.

What’s frustrating is that those with the most influence seem to be committed to the least reasonable course of action. The people who have no voice, those tormented by the masked men and largely ignored inept leaders, continue to endure the pain of death, displacement, fear, riot, and humiliation. They continue to be ground under the wheels of history. For them, progress is more about this immediate ongoing pain than it is in deliverance or renewal. If these people can be given voice, and some tools for realizing the kinds of outcomes that would truly serve their interests, we could see considerable progress in the region.