All posts by geneva.overholser@gmail.com

Media revolution, Newspapers, Press and politics

Election 2016: A tough test for journalism, and the midterm grades aren’t good

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The 2016 presidential campaign is handing journalism an extraordinary challenge: How to deal with so many remarkable developments — a mold-breaking Republican front-runner, a former first lady in the lead for the Democrats, an extremely volatile electorate — all at a time of disruption for news organizations.

Given the importance of this election, trying to figure out what is happening in time for some mid-course correction feels critical. Toward that goal, here are a few thoughts about some of the factors at play:


1. All Trump, much of the time.

The catnip of Donald Trump’s candidacy has been irresistible to the media, resulting in coverage that is unprecedentedly cockeyed. As a recent New York Times article put it, “Over the course of the campaign, he has earned close to $2 billion worth of media attention, about twice the all-in price of the most expensive presidential campaigns in history. It is also twice the estimated $746 million that Hillary Clinton, the next best at earning media, took in.”

This chart, from the Times article, shows how utterly out-of-whack Trump’s “free-media” coverage has been:

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This constant coverage – even of the outrages (maybe especially of the outrages, in Trump’s case) — has undeniably served to elevate him above all others.
Continue reading Election 2016: A tough test for journalism, and the midterm grades aren’t good →

Media revolution, Uncategorized

The Media Revolution: What It Means for You

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As part of the University at Buffalo’s International Education Week, I gave a keynote address about what’s happening in the media world today — what we’re losing, what we’re gaining, and what the students ought to do about it.  I urged the students to “seize the opportunity to make contributions.  And take responsibility for the contributions you make.”

Here is the text:

University at Buffalo, International Education week, November 2015

“The Media Revolution: What It Means for You”

It’s a pleasure for me to be here as part of International Education Week. And I’m especially delighted that you have made media your focus. Nothing could be more essential to an understanding of this fast-globalizing world than media.

You know, we say that we are what we eat. More generally, we are what we consume. And that surely goes for media. Our media diet, like our food diet, shapes us every day – for good and for ill. If we select wisely, we nourish ourselves and contribute to good health. If we choose junk, we pay for it. Moreover, our society pays for it. Just as the nation’s health and economy are affected when people eat poorly, our democracy is undermined when people fail to nourish their understanding of the world around them. A government of the people, by the people and for the people is only as good as the thinking and participation OF the people. A democracy of know-nothings will get what it deserves: poor public policy, an inability to progress, a loss of international standing. You, individually, are part of the recipe for good health – for yourself, and for the society of which you are a part.

Continue reading The Media Revolution: What It Means for You →

Uncategorized

Some fairness, please

The press is right to cover assiduously Hillary’s email controversy. And NOT right not to cover her important UN speech! See the fine piece here, which I found only after searching arduously for anything about the speech amid the clamor about the email: http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-two-front-war-312833

I must note, this brings up an unhappy memory. Twenty years ago, when Clinton gave her Beijing speech on the topic of women’s rights, I was ombudsman at the Washington Post. And I got a call from a staffer of Hillary’s– Lissa Muscatine, now an owner of the bookstore Politics and Prose in DC — saying that, while the coverage of the speech was terrific (and it was — noting that this was the first truly important foreign policy speech given by a First Lady), the paper had incorrectly printed accompanying excerpts from different remarks she had given that day, to a much smaller crowd, on abortion rights. Thus, the coverage touted the importance of the speech, and the printed remarks were from another address entirely.

I said I was sure the foreign desk would want to correct it, especially since the record would otherwise be wrong. She said she had already talked to them, and they had declined. Astonished, I talked to the foreign editor myself, and found him tenacioiusly resistant. Only after considerable back and forth did he reluctantly publish a “clarification,” not a correction. Such resistance to being fair about women’s words remains, clearly, today (as does that editor, at the Post — Jackson Diehl, now with the oped page.) This surely must change. It’s against the press’s own interest (not to mention the nation’s) to be so blind to fairness.

…

Clinton Fights for Global Women’s Rights, Watches Her Back at Home
Her campaigning for women’s rights, and her efforts to explain her emails, shows how tricky it is to be Hillary.
newsweek.com|By Nina Burleigh
Uncategorized

RIP David Carr

We have lost an extraordinary talent tonight, with David Carr’s death, far too soon.

My own little piece of this widely shared awareness began in 1997. Carr had barely arrived in DC from Minneapolis when he wrote (in the Washington City Paper) a little something more perceptive about my time as Washington Post ombudsman than I could have conjured up myself.  I chafed at his “prairie marm” reference, given my many previous hometowns.  But his eye was a keen one, and I’ve been relying on it ever since:

“Geneva Overholser, ombudsman for the Post, was elected chairwoman of the Pulitzer Prize board last month. Ombudsmanship is usually a one-way ticket to obscurity, but Overholser, the former editor of the Des Moines Register, is making a name for herself by taking on some of the paper’s most hallowed names. Last Sunday, she chided her employer for its cheesy “Issue Forum” special advertising sections, which look like news but aren’t. And she took on Bob Woodward—something that hasn’t happened since he was canonized back in the ’70s—for his use of unnamed sources in his takedown of Al Gore’s fund-raising activities. Managing editor Bob Kaiser felt compelled to respond to her critique in print, which suggests that she’s getting under somebody’s skin. Overholser’s ascension to the chair of the Pulitzers isn’t going to get any seconds in the Post newsroom, where Beltway provincialists view her as a prairie marm who just doesn’t know how business gets done in the big city.”

Carr, for so many perceptive and thoughtful and illuminating pieces, we’ll miss you sorely.

 

 

Leadership, Newspapers, Uncategorized

Rape and anonymity: A fateful pairing

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Nancy Ziegenmeyer identifies the man who raped her. By David Peterson, from the 1989 series
Nancy Ziegenmeyer identifies the man who raped her. By David Peterson, from the 1990 series

The Rolling Stone’s indefensible University of Virginia gang-rape story felt like a punch in the gut to anyone feeling hopeful about progress against sexual assault. But hopeful I remain. This fight is (finally) too vigorous to be stopped by flawed journalism.

News and social-media coverage over recent weeks, from the serial rape allegations against Bill Cosby to reports of sexual assault in the military and on campuses across the nation, would indicate that rape is at last being recognized — as an unacceptable reality that we have accepted for far too long. A lot of people seem to have decided no longer to acquiesce in the notion that rape and silence go hand in hand.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of folks poised to seize on any sign that a rape claim might be false. Rolling Stone gave these folks a huge assist: A spectacular gang-rape story, almost entirely free of attribution, quickly collapsing under its own weight. Continue reading Rape and anonymity: A fateful pairing →

Newspapers, Press freedom

Press freedom issues right here at home

 

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During my engagement with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, on their Open Journalism project, I learned a lot about press freedom issues in OSCE’s 57 member nations.  Among the many interesting folks I got to know is Boro Kontic, director of the Media Centre  in Sarajevo.  Boro told me his site features stories of press-freedom issues — primarily from his own part of the world.  Boro and I talked about the fact that, for all the ways in which we are fortunate, we in the U.S. have our own press-freedom problems.  He asked me if I’d do a post for the site.  Here it is: “Instead of transparency and openness – an ever-deepening secrecy.”

 

Leadership, Newspapers

Where are the women?

Geneva Overholser

Photo Courtesy of USC Annenberg

Geneva Overholser

Former editor, The Des Moines Register

There’s a welcome, thought-provoking look at the paucity of women in leadership in media in the new Nieman Reports, Why so few women in media leadership?  The American Society of News Editors and Associated Press Managing Editors will be mulling the same question next week at a panel I’ll moderate at their joint convention in Chicago.

I’ve long felt that one change, among many, that newsrooms will have to make is to reframe their pinched notion of “diversity.”  Here are my thoughts from the Nieman article:

The newsroom culture desperately needs to shift from the old “We journalists know news, and it looks like this, and that’s what the public has to get” to a new ethos: The public is no longer just sitting there receiving the “wisdom” produced by our narrow conventional definitions of news. We need to figure out how to serve the myriad interests of our fast-changing communities. The best allies in this new ethos are people who themselves have had varied and differing life experiences. When this new ethos takes hold, then people of different economic and educational backgrounds, different ages, genders, ethnicities, become the “experts.” To date, we’ve dutifully sought to hire “different” folks but then forced them to conform to the reigning ethos. This isn’t comfortable for anyone. If men are forcing themselves to speak less but really don’t believe that others have more to say, it won’t work. Everyone needs to believe that LISTENING to people who have views other than their own is more important to the newsroom than ensuring that their own wisdom prevails. Newsrooms are allergic to cultural conversations like this, but they really are essential. Folks have to quit thinking of diversity as a wearisome duty and start understanding it as a key to success, an exciting prospect, the only way to win in the future. And it turns out that, for most people, it’s a lot more fun to work with a wider assortment of folks.

 

 

 

 

Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Uncategorized

Hey, Silicon Valley: You oughta have old journalists (like me) on your boards!

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I loved doing this interview with the wicked-smart and delightful Ruben Sanchez, just out in Skyword.com’s Innovator Series.  Reading it over, I realized that one of the ideas I mentioned to Ruben is something I wanted to develop a bit, so here goes:

In all immodesty, the cool, bristling-with-ideas folks planning startups are overlooking an opportunity:  They should be putting old journalists (yes, like me) on their boards. Google “why startups fail,” (see here, here and here for just the first three examples I saw) and you’ll get my point.  Veteran journalists have skills that counter common startup plagues.

Take the single-minded commitment of one leader: It may be a criticall thing for a startup, as far as it goes.  But listening mostly to yourself is a problem.  Run your thoughts past folks who have served the public interests in many different ways over a long period of time, and everyone is likely to learn something.   Same with one very narrow idea — enrich it by regularly subjecting it to discussions with those who have long experience with life, and enhance its staying power.

Management weaknesses are another challenge.  Anyone new to this arena could benefit from the counsel of those who have found solutions over years of management challenges.

Veteran journalists know how to picture the people they are trying to reach.  They know how communities function and what strengthens or weakens democracy. They know how to write, edit, verify, curate. And, stubborn and passionate as we are, old journalists can help by bolstering your tenacity and passion when those are flagging.

Silicon Valley is famous for its lack of gender and ethnic diversity. Both of these lamentable facts decrease startups’ chances of success in our ever more diverse society. Here’s another lack that weakens them. Journalism has made plenty of mistakes over the past few years. Why not benefit from what we’ve learned from them?