Depth Reporting

In search of hard numbers on mass newspaper layoffs

2008-07-05T10:31:00.001-05:00

Last week an anonymous reader commented on my post about the newspaper layoff map:

All this fuss over some layoffs. What a bunch of cry babies. Now that the newspapers are going through what the rest of us have been dealing with for decades all of a sudden its big news. There are hardly any news articles about US companies replacing American workers with 65,000 H1B visa temporary workers each year and that is not even counting the L1 visas. Journalists callously wrote articles about how poor foreigners need those jobs. Well where are the articles about how the outsourcing in the news industry is good and helps poor immigrants get jobs. As far as I'm concerned, the current downsizing/outsourcing going on in the news industry is some much needed bitter medicine for the out of touch media.

Journalists do come across as oblivious to the economic reality faced by most other workers. Layoffs are common in other industries, even in the allegedly fast-growing and dynamic high-tech world. Companies like Sun Microsystems, Motorola and Yahoo! have laid off workers in the last year. And in many industries, workers aren't offered expensive buyout packages, as most newsroom employees seem to be getting. They're just let go, period.

Newspaper layoffs don't show up in the mass layoff statistics kept by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last month, after reading about The Palm Beach Post cutting 130 jobs from its newsroom, I looked there for signs of a more general surge in big newspaper job cuts and couldn't find any. The bureau releases the data monthly, with the most recent release for May, so presumably large newspaper layoffs would show up there. I couldn't find data sliced as finely as I wanted it, however, so its possible a trend is visible in other numbers I didn't have access to.

The bureau classifies industries using the North American Industry Classification System. There is a category, 511111, for newspaper publishers, but narrowest data grouping I could find online was a breakdown by "Publishing Industries (except Internet)." That isn't on point because it includes not only newspaper publishers but also magazine, book, directory, software and greeting card publishers.

Here's what the yearly figures since 1996 look like in a Google Chart. I assume the spike in 2001 reflects the dot-com bubble bursting.

Another issue is that the definition of a mass layoff -- "Fifty or more initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits filed against an employer during a 5-week period, regardless of duration" -- doesn't apply in most newspaper situations. The number fired is either less than that or reached through buyouts, which don't count as layoffs.

Newspaper layoffs also don't appear to be fall under the WARN Act, which requires companies to to give advance notice of mass layoffs under certain conditions. The government's guide to what must be reported (PDF) says you may be covered by the law if your job loss occurs as part of:

A plant closing ... where your employer shuts down a facility or operating unit ... within a single site of employment ... and lays off at least 50 full-time workers;

A mass layoff .... where your employer lays off either between 50 and 499 full-time workers at a single site of employment and that number is 33% of the number of full-time workers at the single site of employment; or

A situation where your employer ... lays off 500 or more full-time workers at a single site of employment.

These don't apply to the typical newspaper scenario.

Many states report these layoff notices on the Web, including Kentucky (PDF). The only mention of a newspaper I found after checking a few other states was in Florida, where in March McClatchy reported 71 of its layoffs.

I found the layoff lists interesting to scroll through. They're a window onto the grinding wheels of the economy and put the news industry's woes, however sorrowful they may be, in context. There are lots of layoffs by mortgage companies, restaurant chains and transportation companies. And if nothing else, you can take cold comfort in knowing that you're in the same predicament as the 162 people let go at Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede.

"Speechology. Political rhetoric examined."

2008-06-26T07:07:00.001-05:00

Speechology offers "User-powered analysis of political debates, speeches and campaign ads."

Speechology is an archive of videos that show politicians stumping for your vote. If a candidate or elected representative said it on TV, we want you to be able to find it on here.

But instead of just showing you the video, we invite you to do your own research and then tell the rest of us what you found. Speechology is a place that does not care what your political preferences are. We only care if you contribute good research. If you would like to argue over politics, go somewhere else. Here, we value facts.

Taking the stand

2008-06-19T10:32:00.002-05:00

I don’t know about you, but I always take the stand with me, because the case might be lost…

Basics of fact checking

2008-06-19T09:05:00.001-05:00

The Infotoday blog summarizes what Brooks Jackson of FactCheck.org had to say at a conference:

Look for expert agreement
Check primary sources
Know what counts (with statistics)
Know who is talking (consider the source)
Cross check everything that matters

"Five Ways to Write Faster"

2008-06-19T08:38:00.001-05:00

... courtesy Daily Writing Tips.

Newspaper layoff map

2008-06-18T08:51:00.002-05:00

graphicdesignr plots "paper cuts". - i.e. buyouts and layoffs in the newspaper industry. The closest to home recently was the Lexington Herald-Leader, which is cutting its work force 4 percent. graphicdesignr says the total industry-wide this year is 4,420+.

[via CyberJournalist]

Research Recap

2008-06-17T21:57:00.002-05:00

... highlights "the best equity, credit, market and economic research." Their latest post summarizes a Forrester report on newspapers' "Near-Death Spiral":

The inability of print newspapers to provide a high level of accountability to advertisers, combined with falling circulation as consumers abandon their subscriptions for content they can get elsewhere, will lead to print becoming a cost center rather than a profit center for newspapers.

Can't read the full report - "The Fragmentation of Yesterday's Newspaper" - online, though. That will cost you $279 -- $86 more than a year's subscription to The Courier-Journal.

[Via Media Stock Blog]

Get car repair estimates from RepairPal or Driverside

2008-06-16T09:19:00.001-05:00

TechCrunch reviews RepairPal, a service that promises to make it easier to know what car repairs should cost. TechCrunch summarizes the need:

Going to the mechanic is like going to the doctor. When something needs to be fixed, for most people there is no easy way to tell if they are being charged the going rate or are being ripped off. Enter RepairPal, a new site launching publicly today where you can get price estimates for different parts and repair jobs for your car. You enter your car year, model, and mileage, and it spits out price ranges for your zip code.

Another similar site that launched recently, also reviewed by TechCrunch, is DriverSide.

[thanks to Jim Malone for the tip]

On the passing of Tim Russert

2008-06-15T09:37:00.001-05:00

Certain stories are always untrustworthy.

This includes stories written within hours of an event and stories about people who have died unexpectedly, as with Tim Russert.

The first New York Times post about Russert's death called him "a towering figure in American journalism." The Washington Post said he "revolutionized Sunday morning television" and his death would have "a large — and lasting — impact on the work of politics and journalism for months to come."

My first thought reading all that was, "Really?"

Tim Russert was a celebrity, no doubt. He was likeable, it seems obvious from the outpouring of affection for him. He was an important figure at NBC, where he was a vice president and the Washington bureau chief. He could get really important people to appear on his Sunday morning talk show to talk shop before its 3 million viewers.

But revolutionary? For taking over a long-running political talk show and reviving it by — gasp! — asking tough questions? I had to look up the definition of towering because its meaning — "surpassing others; very great" — didn't fit with my view of Russert.

I thought of him as a better-than-average commentator who loved the game and the people in it a little too much. I thought of him as more a political schmoozer than a fact gatherer, a point I made a year ago when the notion of picking up a phone to nail down facts seemed beyond him. Russert began his career as an apparatchik of politicians, hardly the best training for a professional disinterested observer.

Tim Rutten wrote in the LA Times:

Watching the cable news networks in the hours after his death, one was struck by the outpouring of admiration and affection from across the political spectrum and from journalistic colleagues of every sort. It was impossible not to be struck — once again — by just how incestuous and claustrophobic the Washington-based nexus of politics and journalism has become.

Thus, in all that gush across four networks in dozens and dozens of voices, hardly a word was spoken concerning Russert's role in the recent trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. That's odd because Libby's conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges was, in some large part, based on Russert's testimony. Like former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Russert was one of the high-level Washington journalists who came out of the Libby trial looking worse than shabby.

That's the way it is when someone dies, no matter who they are. There's an immediate instinct to emphasize the good and suppress the bad. It's understandable, commendable even. But it's hardly an honest reflection of a life. It's hard to put things in perspective when you're in shock.

Russert led a good life and did good things but it's what people will say long after the reporters have stopped typing that will be the true measure of the man.

Dipity, an interactive timeline maker

2008-06-13T09:17:00.006-05:00

It took me less than two minutes to make this timeline of Depth Reporting posts using Dipity.

All I did was register for the site and paste in the blog's feed. Nice. My feed isn't geotagged, so the map view of this widget doesn't work, but that's my problem, not theirs.

I'm beginning to think that eventually all Web data sharing will take place through embeddable widgets like these.

[via Infodoodads]

Google Maps adds Louisville Street View

2008-06-12T09:18:00.002-05:00

Louisville is the latest city to get Google Maps Street View. If you're not familiar with it, Street View gives you a ground-level look at selected cities. You can take a virtual drive down any street, rotating the view 360 degrees to see building fronts and pedestrians. Louisville and Lexington are among 37 new areas added this week. Google is blurring faces now after spotting strange or embarrassing moments captured by Google's roving cameras became a Web sport. Other features added to Google Maps recently include photographs from Panoramio and entries from Wikipedia. To try these just click on the "Street View" or "More" buttons on the upper right corner of the map.

This YouTube video gives you a better idea of what Street View is all about:

[via Twitter]

ProPublica: "Journalism in the Public Interest"

2008-06-11T09:05:00.001-05:00

ProPublica is a New York-based non-profit dedicated to investigative journalism that has hired more than 20 experienced reporters and editors. This week it "quietly" opened its doors on the Web. They call themselves an "experiment" and believe they are "the largest, best-led and best-funded investigative journalism operation in the United States."

Their Web site will feature not only their own work but also a round-up of investigative stories from around the Web; commentary and analysis of some of those stories; and "Scandal Watch," which "will track the top five investigations (other than our own) at any given moment, selected by our editors and ranked by intensity of coverage."

From their about page:

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that will produce investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work will focus exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We will do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.
Investigative journalism is at risk. Many news organizations have increasingly come to see it as a luxury. Today’s investigative reporters lack resources: Time and budget constraints are curbing the ability of journalists not specifically designated “investigative” to do this kind of reporting in addition to their regular beats. This is therefore a moment when new models are necessary to carry forward some of the great work of journalism in the public interest that is such an integral part of self-government, and thus an important bulwark of our democracy.
The business crisis in publishing and — not unrelated — the revolution in publishing technology are having a number of wide-ranging effects. Among these are that the creation of original journalism in the public interest, and particularly the form that has come to be known as “investigative reporting,” is being squeezed down, and in some cases out.
ProPublica is led by Paul Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Stephen Engelberg, a former managing editor of The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon and former investigative editor of The New York Times, is ProPublica’s managing editor.
Lead funding for this effort is being provided by the Sandler Foundation, with Herbert Sandler serving as Chairman of ProPublica; other leading philanthropies also providing important support. A Board of Directors and a Journalism Advisory Board have also been formed.

[via Portfolio.com]

TagCrowd: "make your own tag cloud from any text"

2008-06-10T09:33:00.001-05:00

I haven't been a big fan of tag clouds because to me they belabor the obvious and aren't a particularly useful way to navigate a Web site, but you may feel differently after checking out TagCrowd. With TagCrowd you can point to any Web page, upload a file or paste text in a box and instantly generate a tag cloud, which you can then embed on your own Web pages.

TagCrowd is taking tag clouds far beyond their original function:

as topic summaries for speeches and written works
for visual analysis of survey data
as brand clouds that let companies see how they are perceived by the world
for data mining a text corpus
for helping writers and students reflect on their work
as name tags for conferences, cocktail parties or wherever new collaborations start
as resumes in a single glance
as visual poetry

The list goes on and continues to grow.

Here's one I made using a story on a school lunch price increase by Antoinette Konz in today's paper:

created at TagCrowd.com

DesMoinesRegister.com Parkersburg Tornado Map

2008-06-08T21:03:00.001-05:00

If you've ever ignored a tornado siren check out The Des Moines Register's map of the Parkersburg, Iowa, tornado, which killed seven people. It shows before and after pictures of the homes destroyed, video of survivors and most astonishing of all, video from a bank ATM showing a house across the street destroyed as the tornado rips through it.

[via Twitter]

Investigative Reporters and Editors conference blog

2008-06-06T17:10:00.001-05:00

... is here. The conference is going on now in Miami.

Enhanced campaign finance maps from the FEC

2008-06-05T09:15:00.001-05:00

The Federal Election Commission has improved its online maps showing contributions to presidential, House and Senate candidates. The FEC says "The latest changes make it easier to view contributions from individual states and to download this information into a spreadsheet." You can search data for the most recent reporting period by contributor name, employer, city and ZIP code and download the results of your search in spreadsheet-friendly formats and XML. "Additional map features include graphs and charts that summarize each candidate’s campaign finance information," the FEC says. "These displays ... can be used to compare each candidate’s cash-on-hand totals, receipts, disbursements and debt balance." Here's last month's press release.

[via ResourceShelf]

Kentucky State Police appeal sex offender database decision

2008-06-04T09:56:00.004-05:00

The Kentucky State Police have gone to court to oppose giving us access to their sex offender database. You will recall the Kentucky Attorney General ruled in April that the KSP had violated the Kentucky Open Records Act by denying us the records.

A brief story in the CJ yesterday explains:

... the state police say the records are not kept in the format the newspaper has requested and they should not have to generate the records.

And, the state police argue that the records had been provided before “one time in an effort to assist” with a story. The state police determined “it was not possible to continue extracting data from the registry to provide these records to the public.”

The state police have also argued that the records are available already on their Web site, which The Courier-Journal could provide a link to.

The KSP's appeal in Franklin Circuit Court is embedded below.

KSP sex offender appeal - Upload a doc

Thematic Mapping Blog

2008-06-04T09:35:00.002-05:00

The goal of the Thematic Mapping Blog "is to elaborate ideas of how geobrowsers and open source tools can be used for thematic mapping."

[via Free Geography Tools]

Annotate your YouTube videos

2008-06-04T09:34:00.000-05:00

... as reported by Google Blogoscoped:

To add an annotation to one of your own videos, check your videos listing and hit the “Edit Annotations” button next to one. You will be able to insert three types of annotations; “speech bubbles,” “notes,” and “spotlights.” Also, you can add a link with each annotation. Those URLs may only point to YouTube though (I wonder if that’s greedy or if there’s a good reason for this). This feature also allows you to create interactive videos – like a video ending with a multiple choice question, leading to different other videos depending on where you click. Combining several of these videos, it would be possible to create a full-featured choose-your-own-adventure game... neat!

Newspapers that Twitter

2008-06-04T09:29:00.003-05:00

graphicdesignr summarizes May's activity. Hah, I was about to write that The Courier-Journal doesn't Twitter, at least officially, but in fact we do. Guess I need to get out of the office more.

Real-time water quality data

2008-06-03T09:48:00.001-05:00

The U.S. Geological Survey now offers real-time maps and data on surface water quality across the U.S. We had a heavy downpour this morning, which is visible on one of the many graphs offered by the service:

The USGS explains:

Real-time water quality is in-stream water-quality measurements made available on the web in real-time. Water-quality measurements are recorded in time intervals as small as 5 minutes to hourly and often are referred to as continuous. These time-dense (continuous) stream data are made available on the Web in near real-time (updated 4-hour intervals or less) (available at http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis). Providing these data in real-time informs the user of stream conditions for various uses and public safety.
Real-time water quality is made possible because of improvements in sensor and data recording technology since the first in-stream sensors were developed in the 1950-60s to directly measure or compute concentrations of many water-quality constituents. Sensors that measure water-quality properties or constituent concentrations are available for specific conductance, pH, water temperature, turbidity, and dissolved oxygen, and ion-specific electrodes (for chloride or nitrate). Sensors also are available that measure portions of the electromagnetic spectrum (light) that indicate adsorption or scatter (turbidity, chlorophyll, and fluorescence) or sound (acoustic Dopler technology,). In-stream chemical analyzers and portable field laboratories for nitrate and phosphorus also are available. Many additional new sensors are being developed as the need for these data increase.

[via ResourceShelf]

mediabistro.com

2008-06-03T09:15:00.001-05:00

You can get a daily email summarizing media news from mediabistro.com:

mediabistro.com is dedicated to anyone who creates or works with content, or who is a non-creative professional working in a content/creative industry. That includes editors, writers, producers, graphic designers, book publishers, and others in industries including magazines, television, film, radio, newspapers, book publishing, online media, advertising, PR, and design. Our mission is to provide opportunities to meet, share resources, become informed of job opportunities and interesting projects and news, improve career skills, and showcase your work.

"Top 10 Essential Web Sites for Litigators"

2008-06-03T09:11:00.001-05:00

... from The Virtual Chase. These are essential sites for reporters too.

From the Frontline: Top 10 journalistic uses for Twitter

2008-05-30T09:44:00.001-05:00

"It's not all useless banter about cats and cookery," the blog says. (No, but the flood of disjointed trivia is the main reason I'm lukewarm about Twitter.)

HowDoYa

2008-05-30T09:25:00.001-05:00

... is a search engine for finding explanations on how to do things -- like seal a driveway, grow a garden or buy a swimsuit.

[via Phil Bradley's weblog]