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Google “can obama win white vote” today and you get about 15,000 responses. Most are duplicates of the same few wire stories, but many are not, and almost all raise the same specter: Barack Obama can’t win in November because he can’t win the white vote.

First, that’s far from a fact. He has won millions of white votes, including mine. Second, Democrats have won three of the last four presidential popular votes, and lost the white vote each time, so why is it necessary for Obama to win it this time? Would Hillary Clinton win the white vote in November? Her husband never did.

So are these news stories really serious analysis of an important issue, or just another way to undermine Obama’s campaign? I would suggest a little bit of both.

Newspaper reporters and editors choose what to define as “news.” Let’s look at the track record so far: Jeremiah Wright is news; John Hagee is not. Bill Clinton’s fortune is news; Cindy McCain’s is not. Barack Obama has never run a business or been a government, which is news; John McCain hasn’t either, but who cares? It’s news that white racists won’t vote for Obama; it’s not news that they apparently will vote for Clinton or Obama …

The analysis so far boils down to little more than stereotypes and assumptions. It’s apparently safe to assume, for example, that white Democrats who have voted for Clinton over Obama naturally will vote for McCain over Obama. Obama is elitist because he’s not winning the blue-collar white vote; Clinton and McCain aren’t winning the blue-collar black vote, but that doesn’t make them elitist.

Not all newspaper columnists have toed the line, of course. Here’s my favorite quote: “Racists should decide the Democratic nomination,” Issac J. Bailey wrote Friday in the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun News. “Sen. Hillary Clinton didn’t use those words in an interview with USA Today, but she came close.” (Which I pulled from an excellent piece in the Black Star News).

Overall, however, the tone of coverage has been “We newspaper folks are not at all racist, of course, but there are so many racists out there that you’re taking a big risk by voting for a black guy. It might be safer to vote for the white candidate instead. That will show those racists!”

I am not suggesting most newspaper people are racist. I definitely am suggesting that most have a conservative bias. Conservative conventional wisdom is that you need the white vote to win elections, even if you have to offend the non-white vote to get it.

Newspapers are reinforcing that “wisdom.”

So I’m a white guy in rural Oregon and I’m more excited about Obama than about any candidate in decades, but that’s not a story to the mainstream media. Now if I hated him, that would be another story.

Literally.

I’ve been playing around with philly.com after reading Mark Potts’ impassioned promotion of the redesign.

I really wanted to get excited about the redesign. I’m not. I don’t hate it, I just don’t see any innovation. The comments are integrated with the stories, which is great, but the blogs are hidden somewhere, as are most of the things people love the internet for.

Oh, and there are polls. Very innovative. For 1994.

It feels like just about every other newspaper site out there. I’ll take more time with the site because I have family in Philadelphia and I visit philly.com from time to time. I hope it grows on me.

In the meantime: Anyone want to tell me why this redesign is newsworthy?

Newspaper editors love to rail against anonymous postings on the internet.

Here, for example, is what Tim McGuire of Arizona State University said this week: “It’s time for newspapers and every other adult working on the web to realize and admit that we are not fostering democracy when we encourage and enable vicious, anonymous comments.”

It’s a small excerpt from a lengthy article that makes many fine points. You can read it here. But making other good points can’t erase this very bad one.

I truly wish people would be civil on the web, talk radio and everywhere else. But anonymous speech is still speech. It still has value… I truly wish people would be civil on the web, talk radio and everywhere else. But anonymous speech is still speech. It still has value and it still deserves protection.

The argument also is deeply hypocritical coming from newspaper editors, who every day hide behind anonymous editorials and a barrage of anonymous sources. Freedom of the press, A.J. Liebling is said to have written, belongs to those who own one. Editors such as Mr. McGuire want to keep it that way. We’ll decide, they say, who gets to express an opinion and whether or not they can do so anonymously.

Demanding that people identify their opinions publicly is a form of intimidation. Nothing more. It’s why we hold anonymous voting so sacred.

I am glad that the internet allows me to be read the unfiltered hate speech of groups I detest (many of who hide behind anonymity). Those people are acting on their hateful opinions anonymously every time they walk into a voting booth. I like having them out in the open so I can try to understand where the hatred is coming from.

Having run anonymous forums at a newspaper for many years, I definitely did not like the sometimes vicious comments people sometimes posted about me. At the same time, I found it educational to know that things I did or said, however innocently, could be interpreted as being malicious. Had I demanded identification I might have protected myself from these slurs, but I wouldn’t have done anything to prevent people from being angry at me and I wouldn’t have learned anything from their anger.

I wrote a column about these anonymous postings at the time, because the paper’s editor was demanding names be made public. In it, I pointed out that the vast majority of postings were not hateful, and some were very uplifting. In the column, I asked if anyone knew the original author of the Golden Rule. I got dozens of responses, almost every one citing a different source.

Nearly everyone agreed, however, that what people say is more important than who says it.

p.s. Soon after that column, the paper got burned by a frequent letter writer who often espoused what I considered to be offensive ideas. He was published because he didn’t so anonymously.  He had a name, which made it OK. Only it turns out the name he was using wasn’t his own. He was in reality the top aide of a Republican legislator. A top aide who was sometimes quoted anonymously in news columns. So much for accountability.

The St. Petersburg Times is redesigning its print product. Some of the changes , such as dropping stock listings, are inevitable. Some, such as merging metro and business are trendy, if misguided.

Some, to me, are just baffling. Why, for example, bring back color weather? The article says people asked for it. Readers want many things, but papers are trying to prioritize those wants. Why weather? Will anyone drop their subscription because the package shrinks or even disappears? I’m a weather fanatic, with a computerized weather station on one of my sheds, but I haven’t looked at a newspaper weather section in years. More than almost any other subject, weather is an arena in which papers can’t compete against TV, radio and the internet. Why to one of your weaknesses at the expense of things papers excel at (or could), such as local business coverage?

Why not drop weather and greatly expand business? It doesn’t even have to be expensive coverage. Lists of new businesses, property sales, promotions, etc., are valuable to people, can add dozens of local names to the paper and can be compiled by clerks. TV stations aren’t going to do that, but they’ll happily kick your butt with their weather coverage, so papers lose in both regards.

And if times are as bad as newspapers suggest, maybe it’s time for some radical ideas. Here’s the most radical I can think of: What about eliminating some print classified content? When you think about, papers are already “benefiting” if you can call it that, from reduced newsprint costs because classified sections are shrinking.

Why not try to turn that to your advantage? Why not convert large chunks of classifieds to free, online only ads? Why not fight back against CraigsList instead of meekly letting it claw you to death? You can still charge for upsells to print, perhaps at a hefty premium if you’re lucky. Maybe you can print all classifieds twice a week, for example, instead of every day, or print all car ads one day, all real estate another, all garage sales another, etc.

Rethinking classifieds might well seem like potential suicide for a newspaper.

But doing the same old same old is guaranteed suicide.

The San Diego Reader takes a look at the fall of the right-wing Copley Empire. Certainly doesn’t bolster the argument that newspapers are losing ground because of liberal leanings …

Nick Denton writes on Gawker that the New York Times should admit that the line between news and opinion is blurry. The paper is not objective, he says.

I agree completely. And I disagree totally.

I agree that the New York Times is not objective. That is not, however, as Mr. Denton suggests, the result of some policy change specific to the Times. No newspaper, in fact no reporter, is objective, because objectivity is impossible. I remember a line from a book on scientific objectivity from my college days: Inherent in any observation is an aetiology and a prognosis.

Where Mr. Denton and I really disagree, however, is in his sweeping conclusion: “The newspaper’s proprietors and editors are obviously moderate liberals, and the conservative columnists are either watered-down or compromised, as token as the useless liberals allowed to whine on Fox News—but the Times can’t acknowledge that it’s partisan.”

The paper is obviously liberal! And Mr. Denton offers a stunning array of evidence to support this dubious conclusion. Some examples: The paper’s coverage of Heath Ledger’s death and its attacks Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and on Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama. Liberal? In fact, none of his examples is remotely liberal, ranging from non-partisan sensationalism to a deeply conservative bias. But to Mr. Denton, it all adds up to an obvious liberal bias.

His comment about opinion columnists is equally dubious. Conservatives are watered-down and compromised? Where? How? David Brooks and Maureen Dowd are hardly watered down. I’m not suggesting that the Times opinion columns are overwhelmingly conservative, not with Frank Rich, Paul Krugman and others, but they certainly are not overwhelmingly liberal.

Paul Krugman and Frank Rich both proudly wave the liberal flag, but Brooks and Dowd don’t similarly wave the conservative flag. Perhaps that gives the appearance of liberal bias, but it’s acknowledged liberal bias, which is what Mr. Denton is calling for. It’s the conservative bias that isn’t acknowledged.

Worse, Mr. Denton laments the bias in news coverage. The Times’ incessant cheerleading for the Bush administration in its news coverage leading up to the Iraq War by Judith Miller and others can hardly be construed as liberal. That coverage warmed the hearts of even the most-ardent neocon, but I don’t know that liberals were similarly entranced by the Times’ suggestion of a Heath Ledger-Mary Kate Olsen connection, which Mr. Denton uses several times to support his charge of liberal bias.

But the Times ran a news story about John McCain and his ties to a lobbyist. Liberal bias! Except it ran a Page 1 attack piece on Barack Obama, with Deval Patrick as proxy, on Page 1 at about the same time.

So you’re right, Mr. Denton.

And oh, so totally mistaken.

Newspapers are publishing, as fact, the opinion that the production of ethanol is responsible for rising food and energy prices and for a looming environmental nightmare.

Rarely if ever does a newspaper publish, as fact or opinion, the opinions that the cost of the Iraq War should be added to the true cost of a gallon of gasoline, that beef consumption is responsible for high food prices, or that cutting trees for newspapers is an environmental disaster.

I understand the arguments against ethanol, and many of them make sense., although there are counter arguments to all of them that also make sense. There are equally compelling arguments for each of the issues I raised in the second paragraph. So why is the argument in the first paragraph accepted as fact and those in the second considered opinion? I think it boils down to politics. Read the rest of this entry »

The Portland Tribune is cutting its print edition to weekly and expanding its presence on the web.

Its announcement of the changes takes a positive tone and touches on many of the themes I’ve been advocating for here on WhapWhap. I should be excited. But …

It’s a tough announcement for me to read, because I know so many of the people who started the paper or worked there. I spent hours in meetings with the founders back in 2000 and 2001 talking about the role of the internet in the launch of the paper. Several of the top execs got it more than most newspaper people I know, but the folks at the top were skeptical, and consciously toned down the web presence.

I can’t help but wonder if this transition would be smoother had everyone embraced a robust web presence right from the start.

Still, I hope the Trib makes it. And if it does fail, I hope people don’t point to the failure and say “See, the web doesn’t work!” Like the Capitol Times before it, The Trib was failing in print, too, so it’s not the best test of a mostly online presence.

Anyway, good luck Trib. I hope you pull it off.

Listen to the drumbeat from media pundits about Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright.

The Chicago Tribune, Tim Russert, Maureen Dowd and most of the rest of the fair and balanced press corps argue that if the constant negative coverage of Obama-Wright doesn’t stop soon, Obama’s campaign is going to suffer. Is that a promise or a threat?

There is only one way to stop the attacks against Wright and Obama. It’s for the people making them to stop making them. That means you, Chicago Tribune, Tim Russert, Maureen Dowd, et al. They could end this debacle today.

But they don’t. Why? Polls suggest the public cares very little about the “controversy.”

Think about the corollary: What if these pundits said “If we ever start comparing John McCain to his controversial and unpopular supporter, George W. Bush, he’s going to be in trouble. What if we led every op-ed page, every broadcast, every letters to the editor page with constant negative coverage of this relationship? What would happen to McCain’s campaign?”

The irony is that the public, by far, considers McCain-Bush a bigger problem than Obama-Wright. There’s good reason to think that if the “liberal” media turned their attack against McCain, his campaign would be toast. But far from playing up the near mirror-image relationship between the two, the press continues to try to protect McCain with absurd articles about what a maverick he is.

Editors and publishers wonder why readers think they’re full of crap. There are many reasons we think that. The fact that they’re far to the right of mainstream thought is one big one.

I’m going to take a breather from bashing newspapers to salute one: The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The paper’s launch of sdBackyard is intriguing. The allows customers to network, generate news and receive targeted news. The paper even plans to convert some of the content generated to print for its community papers.

My early review of the site is mixed, but at tleast the folks in San Diego are trying to use technology rather than fight it.

My primary concern is that the site isn’t very edgy. It looks and feels more like eons.com than it does Facebook, Craigslist, etc. That’s safer for the paper and makes it more likely that traditional newspaper readers will feel comfortable using the site. Therein lies the rub: It feels like an adjunct to the existing product more than an aggressive attempt to expand the company’s audience to non-traditional customers. I think other efforts, including Seattle’s NWSource do a better job of targeting a younger, more active audience, but without some of the tools sdBackyard employs.

Having said that, the best social-networking sites take on a life of their own and develop personalities shaped by users, so if editors and marketers can relinquish a good deal of control the site could be incredible.

Unfortunately, newspaper folks are not good at relinquishing control. There are complex concerns about credibility and civility that every social-networking site wrestles with (or should). Too often, however, newspaper execs’ concerns about the web take on an ethereal tone. Vague references to “quality” and “integrity” sound noble, but unless we let consumers take the lead in defining what those terms mean to them there’s more fear and arrogance than substance to the concerns.

Similarly, fear of losing control can keep smaller publishers from trying similar experiments. To keep complete control over a site like sdBackyard, from proprietary programming to maintenance to content, is expensive. Free, open-source platforms such as Drupal and Joomla are more than capable of doing the job for a small or mid-sized paper. For example, I have a little Drupal site for my family that allows users to create blogs, post photo galleries and videos, participate in forums and polls and more, and I’m no programming genius.

Using these tools does result in the loss of some control over the look and functionality of the site, because unless you are a programming genius you’re at the mercy of diffuse international band of developers for enhancements, upgrades, etc. Still, I gave up that control, and I invite smaller papers to do the same.

I think it’s a small price to pay for the survival of your company.