Cross-posted from The Farm Report

I noticed it 30 years ago, when I began teaching. In my history class, students seemed to have little interest in the cast of characters until photography came along. Pictures changed the way we looked at history. We were never as interested in George Washington as were in Abraham Lincoln. It was because of those portraits of Lincoln, where we could look into his haunted eyes.

You can’t hide from pictures. The horrific video of a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, bleeding out on a Tehran street not only makes the political upheaval in Iran more tangible, it also shows the power of new media. We don’t turn to television, toward any immaculately dressed network news anchor, to see these images. We click on YouTube and get handheld cell phone video from a helpless bystander.

The photographer was a doctor, not a journalist. But the new media have changed the way we regard journalism and changed the very nature of the game. That journalists are bitching about this is somewhat hypocritical. Journalists have always bowed and scraped before the gods of competition. We believe that competitive journalism is better journalism. And as newspapers folded or were gobbled up by chains, we lamented at the cost of competition. If you wanted to create a competitor in a one-newspaper town, you were out of luck unless you have a couple billion for start-up cash.

Now all it takes is a kid with a keyboard or a bystander with a cell phone. The citizen journalist is all around us. It’s taken us back to the days of colonial journalism in America when a kid with a printing press could make a difference. So why should we – i.e., journalists – bitch about this?

Because we can. As Morley Safer said this week, “I would trust a citizen journalist as much as I would trust a citizen surgeon.” Agreed, big guy.

There are still a number of questions to be raised about how new media have democratized journalism. I go into detail about this in my new piece for The Florida Engineer. In the piece, I chat with Tom Wolfe about his concerns about how new media and all of our cool new time-saving toys are eating all of the precious hours from our too-brief lives on this planet.

But if we raise issues about any of this, we’re put down as Luddite assholes for even asking questions. (Odd … that would seem to make them the small-minded ones.)

Certainly, information posted on The New York Times website carries with it the credibility of that magnificent franchise. Maybe JoeBobsDailyNews.com can’t complete with that. (Don’t Google that. To the best of my knowledge, there is no JoeBobsDailyNews.com.)

The arrogance of now – whatever generation sits in the throne room – is that what we have achieved is it. But we need to see that we are always in transition. The over-used buzz phrase on campuses these days is that “change is the only constant.” Like all clichés, it suffers from truth.

Newspapers and news organizations are evolving. The public now has tools to rival a reporter’s toys. We’re coming together and something new is emerging. It’s fun to watch and it’s scary. We teeter on the precipice of trivialization. If you don’t believe me, ponder the media attention this week given to Perez Hilton’s face cut and resulting rant.

Yet on the other side of the precipice is a new world order of information sharing. It continues to make this — despite the media saturation of “Jon and Kate Plus 8” — a fascinating time to be a media watcher.

Sometimes, my friends in the newspaper business tell me they’re baffled that our journalism enrollments are through the roof at the University of Florida. We are more than 100 students above our enrollment cap in journalism. Despite bad news in the news business, students still  line up to petition to get into our program.

“Don’t they read newspapers?” my friends ask. “Don’t they realize what’s happening to our business?”

Of course they do. But I have some good news.  The best of today’s students still have the same convictions about public service and the people’s right to know as any newspaper journalist. They are committed to strong and accurate storytelling.

They’re just not so sure that these functions require newsprint.

I tell my friends that today’s journalism students have “faith in the function, if not the form” of journalism. No matter how it’s delivered, there will always be a demand for news and information.

The News Media Guildi is protesting (and rightly) on behalf of its members at the AP because of new social media policies at the news organization that will now require reporters and editors to remove comments and other info on their Facebook pages that don’t meet AP standards.

From Editor & Publisher:

“It is making some people cringe,” said Kevin Keane, News Media Guild administrator. “It is not appropriate for a company that heralds free speech.”

Keane also objected to another portion of the new rules that states: “Posting material about the AP’s internal operations is prohibited on employees’ personal pages.”

“You can’t tell people not to talk about anything internal to AP,” Keane said. “It is too broad. People have the right.”

Equally is its backwards policy on reporters using Twitter to communicate news. Here is both the Facebook and Twitter provisions from AP’s Q&A-format policy:

Q. Anything specific to Facebook?

It’s a good idea to monitor your profile page to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards; any such material should be deleted. Also, managers should not issue friend requests to subordinates, since that could be awkward for employees. It’s fine if employees want to initiate the friend process with their bosses.

Q. How about Twitter?

We’re still the AP. Don’t report things or break news that we haven’t published, no matter the format, and that includes retweeting unconfirmed information not fit for AP’s wires. Feel free to link to AP material that has been published. It’s difficult for most people to link to AP Mobile stories right now, so link to member and customer sites instead and try to vary the links to spread the traffic around. It’s a good idea to reference the AP in the promo language, i.e. Just how much geek can be chic? Test your fashion IQ with this interactive game. Also, when tweeting, remember that’s there a big difference between providing an observation (”I nearly bumped into Chris Matthews outside Penn Station”) and an opinion (”I nearly bumped into the loudmouthed and obnoxious Chris Matthews”).

BTW, that’s not opinion about Matthews; he is an obnoxious loudmouth. That’s how he puts bread on his table.

This from the Guardian:

Claire Enders, the chief executive of Enders Analysis, told a Commons committee that newspapers would close across Britain because revenues would collapse by 52% – or £1.3bn – between 2007 and 2013.

“We are expecting up to half of all the 1,300 titles will close in the next five years,” Enders told the Commons culture, media and sport select committee hearing on the future of local and regional media.

— As of now, I’m still being charged with three ridiculous misdemeanors by the St. Paul City Attorney’s office: Unlawful Assembly, Obstructing Legal Process, and Disorderly Conduct — all of which I’m pretty confident I’m innocent of. I was all set to fly back to St. Paul and defend myself at my arraignment last week when I finally got a call back from the city attorney who is prosecuting my case. Reeking of “Minnesota Nice,” she advised me to hold off on flying up there so she could have more time to review my case and maybe even drop my charges. That was sincerely nice of her but I wish she would have told me that BEFORE I purchased another $350 roundtrip ticket. She didn’t have much to say about that. (Minnesota niced out I guess.) I postponed my court date and somehow managed to get a credit for my flight. Then I sent the prosecutor the video I was shooting right up to my arrest so she could see for herself that I was just sort of milling about peacefully when the cops chased me down and beat me up. She watched it and agreed that it didn’t look like I did anything illegal…”BUT“, she said, “you paused the tape.”

“Um, yeah, I think I pressed pause for a second or two by accident.”

“Aha! And how am I supposed to know that you didn’t break any laws while the tape was paused?”

“Well, I’m just not the kind of person that would do that…”

“Uh huh.”

(NOTE: This is not verbatim, just the gist .)

So now it’s a waiting game for me to see if the cops can come up with any evidence whatsoever to support their claim that I acted disorderly, obstructed their legal process, and/or assembled with others illegally (which I find particularly hilarious, seeing as Freedom of Assembly is one of those constitutionally guaranteed rights we supposedly enjoy).

But the most beautiful irony of the whole debacle, the one that puts a pretty red bow on top of this whole ugly mess, is that the court rescheduled my hearing in Minnesota for Nov. 4. Election Day.

— During this summer’s political conventions, the most interesting news and commentary to come out of Denver and St. Paul came from independent journalists.

Folks from small underground outfits like Submedia.tv, The UpTake, Mobile Broadcast News, and others, risked getting shot, gassed, and having the living shit kicked out of them by police for simply trying to get the word out about what was going on down in the streets. This has led to some interesting debate regarding the validity of this kind of journalism as compared to, oh say FOX News, and whether these kind of “citizen journalists” should have the same rights and be held in the same regard as “official” credentialed journalists working for corporate media outlets. After dozens of media folk were arrested while filming or recording events during the RNC (including Yours Truly), The Society of Professional Journalists held a panel discussion to examine just how it all went down during the protests in St. Paul and why they kept fucking with the journalists. You can see an interesting excerpt from the panel here and watch the first 30 minutes of the discussion here.

— Speaking of indy media, a new documentary cleverly entitled Ground Noise and Static was recently released that chronicles what happened in the streets outside the political conventions this summer and uncovers some of the things America didn’t get to see on their televisions. This film is a snapshot of American dissent during this historic election year and is definitely worth a check out here.

I say let it slip because Last month, as E&P points out, the newspaper buried the lede its woes in a broader story about industrywide problems and only deep in the story getting around to the 58 news jobs that are going bye-bye. it looks like. This week, the newspaper was more forthcoming and prominently played the changes.

(Thanks to a sharper reader than I for pointing out that my original take on this was wrong and that the E&P piece was published last month. Mea culpa.)

Peter, a season ticketholder, wasn’t surprised that Trop security screeners tore up his “Dukes A Hazzard” sign. But when he went looking for a copy of either newspaper to hold up in protest of Dukes’ alleged domestic threats, he found all the racks in and around the ballpark empty.

Did someone — the Rays? — lift all the copies, something that wouldn’t have been unimaginable back in the days of Vince Naimoli’s ownership?

No. It turns out it was the Times itself that was responsible for the missing papers. In an e-mail response that Peter provided to Creative Loafing, tbt* distribution manager Craig Holley wrote on Thursday:

Aaron – thanks for the heads up. We made the choice not to distribute at Tropicana Field yesterday. Naturally there is a fine line we have to walk at times and that seemed like the best choice. Things are back to normal today.

When I called Holley, he said, “This has been a hot topic today.” He deferred any detailed questions about the matter to higher ups.

Tbt* publisher Joe DeLuca, however, blamed the distribution problem on an error in communication at the newspapers. The Times is often sold outside the stadium by youth groups as a fundraising tool, he explained. On Wednesday, there was no group signed up for the outside sales. DeLuca said that distribution workers misunderstood the message that there would be no fundraising sales and instead believed they were being told not to put out any newspapers at all at the ballpark.

“We did have a screw-up,” DeLuca said late this afternoon. “We made no conscious decision not to distribute tbt*.”

DeLuca said newspapers were back in the Trop for today’s game, with another Rays-Duke story on 1A of the Times. He called Wednesday’s articles “a great story” and nothing the Times would — on purpose — back away from distributing anywhere.

The Times is a major, “exclusive” marketing partner of the Rays. It is the “official newspaper of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays,” and the ball team’s website, devilrays.com, is “presented by the St. Petersburg Times.” It represented the first Internet title sponsorship deal in Major League Baseball when it was announced in 2006.

DeLuca said he spoke to Peter to explain the mistake. But Peter felt the move was no accident.

“It has to be one of the most unethical newspaper decisions I have ever heard of,” Peter said in a telephone call today. “Would you pull the newspaper from the courthouse if you had an unsavory story about a judge?”

Peter said he and his father-in-law went to the game Wednesday. Peter had a copy of tbt* in his hands, with a cover photo of Dukes and a headline that repeated one of the alleged threats he made to his wife: “You Dead, Dawg.” He wanted another one for his father-in-law to hold up, but a search of all the newspaper boxes at the stadium yielded either no papers at all or day-old issues of both the tabloid and the broadsheet daily.

(sign photo courtesy Jeff Wilcox)

While all but one of the Times‘ awards came in the print catetory, Media General’s TBO.com was dominant in the online section, winning one first place and four second places. Media General (which owns Newschannel 8 the Tampa Tribune) simply can’t compete with the better-financed Times and has chosen, instead, to put its journalistic juice into its online future.

Bay News 9 and ABC Action News won awards in the television category; Tampa Bay radio was shut out.

The Times won:

Non-Deadline News/Daily
1st: St. Petersburg Times, “Ninth or Never,” Ron Matus

Features/Daily
1st: St. Petersburg Times, “Kennel Trash,” Kelley Benham

Editorial
2nd: St. Petersburg Times, Editorials, Tim Nickens

Sports Commentary
3rd: St. Petersburg Times, Gary Shelton columns, Gary Shelton

Investigative
3rd: St. Petersburg Times, “When Dry is Wet,” Craig Pittman and Matthew Waite

In addition, the Poynter-owned Florida Trend magazine won a third place in Monthly Features for Cynthia Barnett’s “Final Frontier.”

In the television category:

Spot News
1st: Bay News 9, “Deputy’s Death,” Bay News 9 News department
3rd: Bay News 9, “Evicted,” Laurie Davison, Jonathan Haas

Continuing Coverage
2nd: ABC Action News WFTS-TV, “Quest for Everest,” Linda Hurtado, Matt McGlsshen, Walt Maciborski, John Turner

In the online division, awards went to:

Breaking News
1st: TBO.com, “Polk County Deputy Slain,” Billy Townsend, TBO.com staff

Best Use of Multimedia
2nd: TBO.com, “A Killer’s Grip,” Clarisa Gerlach, Tim Price, Tampa Tribune staff, WFLA staff

Niche Journalism
2nd: TBO.com, “Tampa’s Local Music Scene,” Ryan Bauer, Tim Price

Commentary/Blogs
1st: Tampabay.com, “Video Games as Art,” Josh Korr
2nd: TBO.com, “Suitcase Stories,” Chris Chmura

Investigative
2nd: TBO.com, “Following the Coldest Trail,” Mike Wells, Tim Price, Vidisha Priyanka