Monthly Archives: October 2008

Maybe we’ll see each other in Lowell

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Howard Owens

If you’re in New England, I invite you to attend the New England New Media Associate fall conference.

NENMA gathering are always good events — neat people to meet and talk with.

I want you to come Oct. 30 if you’re in the area so you can hear my keynote presentation on “Reinventing Journalism.”

Last year, the keynote was delivered by Steve Yelvington. The year before, by Rob Curley. So I’m honored to be in such good company as a keynote. I hope I can live up to the standards they set.

Also, if you happen to be in Albany on Nov. 13, you can catch me on a panel for the Women’s Press Club of New York State on ethics in social media.  The panel is at 7 p.m. at The College of Saint Rose. Continue reading →

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McCain failed my job interview question technique

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Howard Owens

If you asked me, what’s the one thing you do well, I would say: Hire people.

Not every hire I’ve ever made has worked out (I can think of two that haven’t out of about 15 I’ve made), but I’ve learned from my mistakes.  Today, I’m quite confident that I have the best people in the business working for me.  If I can be allowed to brag: I’ve hired very well over the past two years.

What’s my secret? It’s a book: First, Break All the Rules.

It taught me an important lesson: Ask interview questions designed to elicit specific answers, and design your questions to uncover the talents needed for the job you need to fill.

The key word there is talents.  Hire for talents, not for skills.  Skills can be taught, but talent is something either a person has on day one of a new job, or they don’t. You can’t hope that a new hire will at some later date develop the talent you want.  People can improve in any number of ways, but there’s no guarantee, so don’t bet the future of your company on the hope that somebody will develop some hidden talent.

This post is not an endorsement of Barack Obama, but in watching CBS evening news tonight, I noticed that Barack Obama and John McCain answered a question from Katie Couric very differently. The answers illustrate perfectly the difference between answering a question with specificity versus answering with wiggle words designed to hide the fact the person being interviewed really doesn’t have a good answer to the question.

People with the talent related to the question can readily offer up specifics, while people who are trying to bull shit you retreat to broad, general language.

The question Katie asked was simple and maybe not a great political interview question, but it’s also the kind of question that can elicit very revealing answers.  Katie asked, “When is the last time you cried?”

From a job interview perspective, it’s a great question (merely, I mean in construction; I’m not suggesting you use this specific question in a job interview … not in the least!), because an honest answer can lead to only a single, specific answer, and anybody who can’t give a specific answer really doesn’t have an answer.

Here’s the start of Obama’s answer:

Barack Obama: This one is actually easy. It was Malia, my 10-year-old daughter’s, birthday party.

We were in Montana. And you know, she’s a Fourth of July baby. So often times, during this campaign, we’d be traveling during birthdays. And so we were in this small hotel, I think a Holiday Inn, and we had this big public thing.

The staff organized for a smaller family party. And we were in this little, non-descript conference room, with Malia and Sasha, Michelle, me, my sister, my brother-in-law and my niece.

Read the rest, but take note of the clear memory, the specificity.  Obama is talking about a clear event that answers the question exactly as asked.  It tells a lot about his values.

Here’s McCain’s answer:

John McCain: I cry regularly.

Couric: You do?

McCain: Aw, yeah. You know, I’m very sentimental. When I see these young people who are serving. I met a woman at a town hall meeting the other day who had lost her son in Iraq. And, I was so touched, because she talked about how proud she was of his service.

And what a fine young person he was. And whenever you have that experience, obviously you think, how could I ever – how could I cope with such a tragedy, you know? And so you know, when I say cry, I get – my eyes well up, as they are right now thinking about these brave Americans and their families who have sacrificed so much for their country, especially recently.

Notice how McCain buys time with a very non-specific proclamation he believes is what the interviewer wants to hear, and then offers up an example that is neither all that specific and certainly not specific to him, but could be any body’s experience. He is telling you what he wants you to believe he values, not necessarily what he really values.

If you put this in “talent” terms, the talent Couric’s question would likely uncover would be related to emotional capacity. If that was a talent you needed for a job — maybe you’re hiring a sob-sister reporter — then this would be a good question to ask.  It’s well constructed for that purpose because it asks a questioned with only one correct answer: An answer that offers a specific and very real example.

I’m not so sure “emotional capacity” is a required talent for president of the United States — it could be a good thing or bad thing, depending on your view point.  At least, the question was designed to elicit an explicit, revealing answer.

Again, I’m not endorsing Obama (I’m most likely to vote third party, if you must know), but if this were a job interview, with more questions to come, Obama would still be in the running and I’d be looking for a polite way to wrap up my meeting with McCain because there is no way I would hire him after that answer. Continue reading →

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Berkeley Breathed not quite right on ‘Reagan Sucks’ memory

Posted on October 19, 2008 by Howard Owens

I’ve just sent this e-mail to Berkeley Breathed in response his quote in this Salon piece.

Dear Mr. Breathed,

I was surprised to read in Salon:

‘In 1986 I had a cockroach scream, “Reagan sucks!” in print size that took up the entire cartoon box. Nobody blinked — 1,000 newspapers, quiet as a mouse.’

I remember quite a few papers upset by the cartoon, and the San Diego Union refused to run the strip.  I wrote an editorial for my newspaper supporting your right to free speech.  The editorial won an award from SPJ. I sent a copy of the paper to you, and you (without my even asking) sent it back autographed (still have it, though have never framed it as I’ve always intended).

In larger context — I disagree with your sentiment that discourse is any more uncivil than its ever been — American political discourse has ALWAYS been ruffian and course.  Mean spiritedness is not an invention of cable news or bloggers.  There’s just more outlets now, and some blowhards have bigger bullhorns.

But there’s also more outlets for civil discourse, and there is more than it than ever … more fact checking, more chance for reasonable voices to be heard amongst the clutter and crap, more people interested in finding truth rather than lies.

Do what you will with your characters and your career, but in an age when we’re ruled by a class of politicians best labeled Republocrats hell bent on Empire and Plutocracy, we need more independent voices, not fewer.  It is a blow to freedom to see Opus silenced.

Continue reading →

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Update on bright new media leaders who have left newspapers

Posted on October 3, 2008 by Howard Owens

A while back, I did a blog post about bright people who have left the industry.  Here’s a quick update (and I welcome further input from anybody who has other names to add).

  • Chris Jennewein is back in, having gone to work for the Las Vegas Sun.
  • Sean Polay has rejoined Ottaway.
  • Lucas Grindley is now online managing editor at National Journal.
  • Not included in the previous list, and I can’t remember if this was an oversight, or if he left McClatchy after the post: Dick van Halsema is now consulting.
  • Steve Smith, who traditionally would probably be classified more print side, but was long a forward-thinking new media leader — he made a very public exist from Spokane this week.

Anybody else? Continue reading →

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Couric interviewed Palin well, but withholding footage was potentially unethical

Posted on October 2, 2008 by Howard Owens

When, as a journalist, you possess information that will have some impact on society, will effect people’s lives, or otherwise rises to some level of salient import, do you have an obligation to publish or broadcast that information immediately, or is it OK to hold it to serve the business needs of your newspaper or network?

I’m ruminating on this question in light of the past week’s dribbling of the Katie Couric interviews with Sarah Palin.

Couric interviewed Palin prior to Sept. 24. The first two segments can be viewed and read here. I didn’t think much about the two-part interview last week. After all, a TV news show has limited time. As much as I believe in web-first publishing, I could give a pass to CBS for holding the interviews for prime-time viewing first.

Then rumors began to circulate that there was more material not yet released. First, that Palin had not been able to name a Supreme Court case besides Roe vs. Wade. Then, yesterday, the video came out of Palin’s inability to name a single newspaper — not the Anchorage Daily News nor her hometown Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman.

Thus, we learned that CBS had withheld newsworthy quotes from the public.

Ethically, is that acceptable?

I doubt a single reader would disagree with these two assertions: That Palin’s answers to Couric were news, and that the answers could have an impact on both on the election and on public perceptions of Thursday night’s VP debate.

So let’s consider the consequences of how CBS handled these answers.

If CBS had released the full interview, either in broadcast or on the intertubes, on the first day the impact might have been:

  • The shock of all the stupidity coming out at at once could have even more quickly torpedo people’s opinions of Palin, McCain and the GOP; or,
  • It would have given both sides more time to dissect what it all means prior to the Thursday night debates, thereby giving voters more time to draw more nuanced conclusions (if that’s even possible in this case).

But the most important factor in a decision to hold the full interview or not is the impact it has on the politically important expectations game.

Experienced political observers know how it works: Lower expectations so that a candidate can rise to the occasion and look better than people believed he or she could. It’s a tried, true and infallible political tactic.

But in dribbling segments of the interview, CBS is able to incrementally lower the expectation that Palin is anything other than a dimwit who is neither engaged nor informed enough to serve as VP.

Loyal GOP partisans, of course, will believe that CBS has handled the interview as it has merely to more broadly and deeply embarrass the governor.

Experienced journalists know that it is unlikely that CBS executives have any political motivation whatsoever. The decision to incrementally release the interview has only one motivation: Ratings.

Which brings us back to the central question: Is it OK for a journalist or a news organization to make decisions about newsworthy events based on business concerns?

Again, clearly, the Palin interview is full of information people need to know.  Is it OK to withhold that information for any reason other than a journalisticly sound reason?

Let’s be clear: I’m not being inconsistent with things I’ve said in the past. The modern journalist cannot be completely divorced from concerns about ratings and readership, but that has more to do with story selection and presentation than what facts a reporter or editor chooses to release when.  My question is very narrow: When you know something to be true, what is your journalistic, ethical obligation to inform the public of that information?  Is it immediate, or can you hold it?

In a Twitter discussion about this topic today, Howard Weaver raised a challenging question about newspapers holding investigative packages for Sunday publication. In 140 chacters, what I think Howard was getting at, is it a business decision to hold for Sunday?

I guess it could be, but Sunday is also the day the most people take the most time with the printed word. If you have a significant issue that you want people to time with and think about, Sunday publication makes a lot of sense. It may be the ethically superior publication day for big-package stories (not so much on the web, though — newspaper.com site traffic plunges on weekends).  You’re also talking about a package that is designed to revolve around a coherent thesis.  The Palin interviews were chalk full of individual news nuggets. There was nothing investigative about it. It was good, probing questions by Katie Couric, but it produced news, not a deep and broad policy review.

Regular readers know, I believe in web-first publishing. I’ve always advocating web-first as an audience growth strategy, but it also has a journalistic component. Journalists should not withhold information from the public based on artificial deadlines.  When you know a fact that is newsworthy, you should tell people. To withhold the information is to rob readers and viewers of time to act on or ruminate over the news. Continue reading →

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