#Neda, Still Outside the Mainstream

It may appear that #Neda–the young woman whose death on the streets of Tehran was captured on a staggering amateur video–has “gone mainstream.”

Which is to say, that Big Media has recognized the role the image may be playing in driving political opinion, and is exploring it as a way to interpret the continuing protests and political activities. [I blogged on this topic yesterday.]

But no.

Where credit is due: Last night CNN repeatedly ran a version of the 37-second video, with proper warnings about its graphic content. The hosts and guests talked about the video’s potential–and apparent–role in galvanizing the protest movement both inside and outside Iran.

The fact that it has done so is beyond dispute.

But CNN stands nearly alone among U.S. mainstream media in its acknowledgment of the role the Neda video is playing in Tehran.

To check this out, I did on-site searches of three major print-heritage MSM news sites. Here’s what I found, as of 3:30 Monday, June 22 [links below are to stored searches]:

WashingtonPost.com

Stories from AP, Reuters and a single homegrown reference: An online discussion by a non-staffer

NYTimes.com

Three references in The Lede news blog, and reference deep in one print article, which says that the authenticity of the video cannot be verified [of which more in a moment]

USAToday.com

Two blog entries, plus wire stories

Let’s open up the search. Here’s what Google News tosses up on a search for “Neda”: 332 results!

But wait, there’s less.

Dig into those results and you’ll see:

• The New York Daily News appears to be alone among U.S. newspapers in offering original Neda reporting in print by its staff. The Kansas City Star and the L.A. Times have blogged on it.
• Among non-daily MSM, Time’s Robin Wright features a print article that uses Neda as a jumping off point to put the current events in historical context
• Otherwise the content comes mostly from ABC news, CNN and FoxNews, which for the most part used the Neda video as a compelling “actuality” to show over the latest news updates.
• Around the world, big media is paying more attention: the BBC and other UK outlets, some local TV stations’ websites, and wire stories from AP, Reuters and AFP.

The journalists most actively discussing the Neda phenomenon? Indie bloggers.

So why the mainstream media prudery?

It could be that, yes, the video is a fraud. I think this a very remote possibility, almost paranoid in its nature. One look at the video makes this quite clear. [One commenter on my blog entry yesterday makes this case--he suspects a "blood packet" has been applied to Neda's face--and many others are doing so around the web.]

The world is a strange and terrible place, and [as a former Washington Post newsroom employee] I am enough of a trained skeptic to see that it’s foolish to rule out the possibility entirely.

It can also be argued that the MSM should exercise its often-valuable caution and care in its reports–especially as new details about Neda’s life and images of her beautiful face emerge from obscure,  unfamiliar sources and are being used to serve the protesters’ political ends. In this view, the MSM is the prudent counterweight to the flighty speculations of the social web, refusing to fall into the hands of the revolutionaries’ spinning.

But as I argued yesterday, I suspect it’s less about that than it is about the MSM’s unwillingness to acknowledge [accept? understand?] its increasingly marginalized role in a fast-moving news environment where real-time global information sharing without MSM approval is the rule, not the exception.

I believe that a lot of the media’s “Well, we’re really not sure” chin-pulling is an affected, self-infatuated dodge–a way to avoid of the larger, paralyzing question:

What, exactly, should the mainstream media should do when a story develops so far beyond its control–or understanding?

n.b. Over at the journalism site Poynter.org, Bill Mitchell explains some of the challenges the Neda video creates for traditionally trained journalists.

#Neda and the Power of the Viral Image

The 37-second amateur video that shows, in vivid and horrifying detail, a young woman named Neda dying of a gunshot wound on the streets of Tehran, has the capacity to change the political dynamic in Iran. It may already have done so.

I will not link to the video here. The decision to watch it should be made carefully, knowing it is sickening and likely to remain with you for the rest of your life. You can easily find it if you want.

I found it nearly overwhelming. I had to step away from the computer and gather myself. Afterward when describing it to my wife my voice was shaking and I couldn’t quite formulate my thoughts.

The morning after viewing it I can say this: I believe that 37 second clip can transform global opinion.

I liken it to the 1972 photograph of the young Vietnamese girl running naked through the streets, her skin seared by the chemical burn of napalm. Or the 1963 picture of police dogs attacking civil rights protesters in Birmingham, Alabama. Both, it is argued, played a key role in galvanizing public opinion on the political issues they represented.

For me, and I suspect many who view it, the Neda video says with absolute clarity: The violent crackdown on street protesters in Tehran must not stand. The perpetrators must be stopped or removed.

It removes any ambivalence or subtlety one might have about the situation there.

Last night I was actually wondering how a government responsible for Neda’s death–in an environment where cheap, instant, global, many-to-many communications has brought the phrase “the whole world is watching” closer to literal fact than it was in the 1960s–can possibly remain in power.

In the cool light of morning I realize that was dramatic hyperbole, heavily colored by emotion.

But still: That 37-second video has already become a singular, powerful fact driving  global opinion. Its impact will only accelerate and expand. It will have consequences.

Let me also predict that the mainstream media is going to miss the import of that video. Partly because they dare not show it, and thus it will not become part of their newsrooms’ collective consciousness–or conscience.

But also because they still tend to view amateur, viral “reporting” as marginal “bonus” material, incapable of driving public thought in the way their own professional reporting and opinionating can.

There is a #Neda hashtag on Twitter. It captures conversations about and inspired by the video.

Yet it is now being added as a hashtag to general Twitterizing on the election protests, as an  expression of commitment at least as powerful as the green avatars that hover like nauseated witnesses over the 140-character global thoughtstream.

Much is made about Twitter and its limited ability to drive change.

This isn’t about that.

It’s about the power of a single, brief incident captured on video–in an  environment where people share what moves them instantly with a global audience, without the assistance or approval of governments, media or any institution—to change others’ minds.

Change the world?

In the cool light of morning, I realize that’s foolish too.

But if you are feeling strong and brave and willing to have a horrifying image seared into your brain, view the video.

It will change you.

Digital News Innovation from. . .the Washington Post!

Enthusiasts of innovative ways to present news in web-native formats should check out the Innovations in News blog from…The Washington Post.

Regular readers of this blog [both of you!] may be surprised to hear this. I’m a regular reader myself, and nobody is more surprised than I.

Having issued a blistering broadside against the Post‘s [my former employer's] inept lunge at web-native storytelling last week, I had no idea that the Post was quietly accumulating some good digital news projects and aggregating them in a blog. It’s been published since mid-April.

Here’s the most news-oriented project of the items of the bunch, a wonderful D.C. Budget Game. It’s an interactive response to the old “You don’t like the budget cuts? You give it a try” dare.

In truth, aside from this, there’s little groundbreaking work here yet–most of the five features on the blog are soft efforts, of the cool-stuff-apropos-of-nothing variety, not journalistic responses to the news. The Post still badly trails the New York Times in innovative use of digital media to commit acts of journalism.

Still, it’s a sign of digital  life. And worth keeping an eye on.

n.b. Nobody at the Post turned me on to this. It’s not a “make-good” blog entry to try to curry favor with my former employer. It’s safe to say that that favor is beyond curry.

A Lasting–Or Last?–Role for Newspapers

Media reports say that there was a run on the nation’s newspapers Wednesday, as citizens bought up all available copies of the editions proclaiming Barack Obama’s historic electoral victory.

I’m embarrassed to say it didn’t even occur to me to save the paper. Worse, I used that copy of the paper to line our birdcage.

I do not mean that metaphorically. I am not trying to be cute. I do not say it to demean the newspaper or Barack Obama. We have an African Gray parrot named Koko, and I use the daily newspaper to line his cage. I didn’t think of setting Wednesday’s aside.

You can guess where I’m going with this.

I have become so digitally inclined that I pay little attention to the printed paper that is dropped at the end of the driveway every morning. In fact, we get it only because as Sunday-only subscribers, we received an offer from the Washington Post, my former employer, to throw in weekdays free–a sad attempt to boost circulation figures that I was willing to condone by accepting it.

Oh, I care deeply about the news itself, and the journalism the Post and other great newspapers produce. I’m following the Obama transition with the same nutty hyperfocus I applied to the campaign. But by the time I pick up the paper in the morning–Koko riding on my shoulder when I venture out to get it–the news is crusty, like the slice of pizza left out on the counter overnight.

Tomorrow’s profile of Rahm Emanuel? Already read a couple–one on the Washington Post site–plus two opinion pieces and the back story on how it happened. Don’t need any more. I’m onto the next thing.

And so I’m wondering whether with the Obama election, newspapers have unwittingly demonstrated what might be their most lasting value–as a tangible artifact that documents major national events. That’s not a bad role, being a keepsake. It’s just one that doesn’t need to be fulfilled more than once or twice a decade.

With today’s news streaming around us all the time, and tomorrow’s paper delivering yesterday’s, the question is: What should a printed newspaper do on all the other days? And what should people do with it?

I have Koko’s cage to attend to. What others do with their papers, I leave to them.

RealClearPolitics: Winning the Digital Journalism Race

Not long ago I castigated Congressional Quarterly for presenting high-quality reportage on political polling via a blog. They’re missing a great journalistic opportunity–to present daily analysis of the latest state-by-state Obama vs. McCain polls in a way that takes full advantage of the interactive visual medium that is the new platform for journalism.

It’s a classic case of old media not understanding what to do with their great stuff. Failing to “unlock the value” of their work, as they say in the corner offices.

Anyway, I’ve since discovered that such a map–a dataviz, or datavisualization, in web argot–exists. Unsurprisingly, it’s the work of a new media firm unburdened by an analog heritage.

The map is produced by RealClearPolitics, an online-only political analysis operation.

The map is a thing of digital beauty, a tool that lets you dig into good polling data smartly analyzed and interact with it by imagining various scenarios.

What if current polling holds through November? [Results shown above, pre convention "bounce."]

What if Obama wins Virginia and New Mexico and the rest of the ‘04 results are unchanged? [Obama wins by a hair.]

What if McCain sweeps the rust belt of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan? [McCain by a mile, even if he loses Florida, etc.]

You can base all of these scenarios on the latest polling data so you can see how realistic your own speculations are.

It’s great work, a simple dataviz that presents best-of-class information in a fully interactive way that delivers a very high level of public service. It’s “civic engagement” on a screen.

If old media doesn’t start winning this kind or race soon, there will be no doubt who will carry the contest for the media future.

No matter who the President is.

Digital Journalism Worst Practices [Reprise]

Two weeks ago I published an entry about the list of finalists of the 2008 Online Journalism Awards. I was impressed overall with the quality of the entries, and emerged with a sense of hope about the future of digital journalism [should a business model ever be discovered to fund it].

But at the bottom of the entry I included some of the Worst Practices in Digital Journalism the winners also exhibited. A few days later an e-mailer suggested, correctly, that I’d “buried the lede,” as we say in newsrooms. This is to say my list of worst practices got lost at the end of an entry about good practices.

So: I’ve reposted the Worst Practices part here. Enjoy. Or not.

Segregating “video” from other parts of a package, or even labeling it as video. Media of all types should be integrated into a whole package. Calling out “video” rings of an anachronistic brag: “Hey, lookit, we did some video, too!” I demand this practice be stopped immediately.

Layering a show-offey Flash entry page above the package. Flash pages waste time, bandwidth and user patience. They add no value. They impress nobody other than their own designers. Stop it, I tell you, stop it!

Placing the whole 3-part, 120-inch wordroll at the center of a digital package. Long blocks of text work okay on paper. They deliver a lousy experience online. Keeping those wayback-style reports at the center of digital packages tells me the newspaper folks are still in control of the website, fighting the future, defending the interests of their print reporters and slowing the new organization’s transition to a financially stable future. In fact, how about this: Instead of sticking “videos” in the sidebar of an article, how about putting “articles” in the sidebar of a visually-driven presentation. ["Hey, lookit, we wrote an article about this too!"] Editors who take offense at that suggested inversion, I submit, may want to consider that next buyout offer very seriously.

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