Overheard at the 2007 ASNE Convention

Spike Lee to add another chapter to the Katrina story

2007-03-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

Spike Lee is in town, and he's bringing good news for the forgotten victims of Hurricane Katrina in southern Mississippi.

"He's going to do at least one more chapter on examining Katrina, and he's going to focus more on Southern Mississippi," Tiner said.

Or at least that's what Lee told Stan Tiner, the editor and vice president of The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss.

"I was at breakfast this morning, and I looked up, and Spike Lee sat down next me," Tiner said.

Tiner spoke to Lee for awhile and complimented him on his documentary about Katrina's effects on New Orleans entitled "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts."

He proceeded to discuss with Lee the fact that Mississippi had received very light press coverage compared with Louisiana.

Tiner said Lee was already aware of the devastation that the area had been dealt at the hands of 30-foot storm surges, and the neglect that the federal government has allegedly shown in aiding the victims of the hurricane.

The aftermath of the tragedy continues to play out across the region, and the "Requiem" is not over yet.

- VANNAH SHAW / ASNE Reporter

'Press 666 now': Learn how to beat the smoothest operator

2007-03-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

Overheard at the National Association of Minority Media Executives last night: A directory at GetHuman.com features 800 numbers and codes to bypass the most robotic automatic phone prompts for companies from JPMorgan Chase to Wal-Mart. It also grades each company.

Ironically, newspaper phone systems didn't score well. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal both got Fs, along with The Washington Post, which features a mysterious instruction: "Don't press or say anything."

- APRIL YEE / ASNE Reporter

The American newspaper: 'A damsel in distress'?

2007-03-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

On the door of room 745 at the JW Marriott is a cryptic, hand-penned message: "STOP THE PRESSES: PLEASE KNOCK."

Inside the hospitality suite is a makeshift studio where two men are trying to tell the story of the American newspaper. This week they have invited an elite handful of ASNE members to predict whether or not, well, the presses might literally stop.

PBS-published filmmaker Mark Birnbaum said this:
"We're posing the newspaper as a damsel in distress tied to the railroad tracks ..." Manny Mendoza added, "about to get run over by the train."

And Mendoza should know. Just last year, the former TV and film critic took a buyout from the Dallas Morning News.

Chopin's "Nocturnes" played forlornly in the background as the pair explained their documentary. At first Birnbaum and Mendoza planned to call the film "- 30 -" in a reference to the traditional newspaper signoff. Ultimately, they christened it "Stop the Presses: The American Newspaper in Peril."

Here in suite 745 (price tag per night: $500), Birnbaum sleeps on the Murphy bed and Mendoza on the pull-out couch. Not knowing how much funding they'll ultimately get, they're trying to stay frugal.

That's a problem we can all identify with.

- APRIL YEE / ASNE Reporter

Connecting foreign news to local readers

2007-03-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

Newspapers have been cutting back on coverage of foreign news for years. One new group is trying to help fill the gap.

Editors’ World, a membership organization, is designed to provide editors and news directors with information about global subjects such as immigration, trade, wealth, environmental policy and health care.

Nancy Hicks Maynard, the founder and director, said the group helps editors address the implications of what’s happening in the world in their local stories.

“The goal is to change coverage and to help news organizations,” said Maynard, co-founder of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland, Calif. “This is to also let the public know that we’re part of the bigger world.”

Editors can register at EditorsWorld.org, which is now running a free trial period but plans to charge a membership fee later this year.

- ASNE Reporter / Sha’Day Jackson

Pulitzer Prize winner Leonard Pitts interviews Spike Lee

2007-03-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

The first online version of ASNE’s The American Editor will feature an interview of Spike Lee, the 2007 convention's closing luncheon speaker, by Pulitzer Prize winner Leonard Pitts Jr.

Lee came to ASNE to discuss his documentary, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts", about the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. Lee and three guest panelists, residents of New Orleans affected by Katrina, appealed to journalists not to let the story of Katrina die.

Pitts interviewed Lee in 1994 for the release of “Crooklyn”. Pitts said that he is a fan of Lee’s work, particularly of the 1989 film, “Do the Right Thing”.

“I like Spike Lee, I haven’t liked all his movies, but I like Spike Lee,” Pitts said.
Pitts also said he appreciated the themes present in Lee’s 2000 film, “Bamboozled”.

“I loved what Spike was trying to say, … about how we as African Americans play ourselves in terms of our own image in entertainment media.”

Pitts -- a Miami Herald columnist, author, and professor -- is sure to do justice to Lee’s message with his interview. Pitts says he has always had a passion for words.

Pitts won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his commentary on Sept 11.

Arianna waxes digital, proposes a journalistic threesome

2007-03-29T12:38:00.000-07:00

Uber-blogger, editrix and former California gubernatorial hopeful Arianna Huffington was on a roll Thursday, when she was a panelist for the “Lessons from the Digital Revolution” session.

In her distinctive Greek accent, Huffington put forth on racy topics from promiscuity to ADD.

On comparisons between online and print: “The debate about is it online or is it print is so obsolete to me. It’s like the old bar-room argument: Ginger vs. Maryann. Let’s have a three-way.”

On Huffington Post staff: “It’s young in spirit. I mean, I’m clearly not young. My partner (co-founder Kenneth Lerer) and I are in our 50’s. It’s not a matter of chronological age but how young their spirit is.”

Huffington also said blogs have obsessive compulsive disorder (they compulsively analyze news) while the mainstream media has attention deficit disorder (they get distracted quickly by other stories and abandon current ones).

- By Tiffany Hsu / ASNE Reporter

A quick word of advice ...

2007-03-29T12:32:00.000-07:00

A gathering of the nation's top newspaper editors is sure to yield some excellent advice. But I would not have expected to hear the following from journalism heavyweight, Allan Siegal, former assistant managing editor of The New York Times.

“Never approach somebody when they are walking at a brisk pace towards the bathroom,” Siegal said.

- By NOELLE LINDSAY / ASNE Reporter

Editors get star-struck too

2007-03-29T12:12:00.000-07:00

The ASNE schedule is full of celebrity speakers, so we asked editors who they were most excited to meet. Ken Tingley, editor of the Post Star of Glen Falls, N.Y., would really like to meet Bud Selig, Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

“I would like to talk to Bud Selig about his opinion on the whole steroids thing,” says Tingley.

Allan Siegal, former assistant managing editor for The New York Times, was looking forward to hearing Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer speak.

“I've heard Justice Breyer in the past, and I admire him very much as man,” says Siegal.

Kenneth F. Bunting, associate publisher for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, hit the sports fan’s jackpot when he was able to spend some time with a well known football mogul.

“I met Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys,” says Bunting. The two mainly talked about the Texas team's new season.

But do the guest speakers really consider themselves “celebrities”? Chris Harte, chairman of the Star Tribune (Minneapolis), doesn’t.

“I'm a guest speaker, but I am definitely not a celebrity,” says Harte.

By NOELLE LINDSAY and REGINA GRAVES / ASNE reporter

ASNE takes the 'man' out of 'chairman'

2007-03-29T07:56:00.001-07:00

This morning's bylaws meeting was literally the ASNE event of the decade. According to ASNE Executive Director Scott Bosley, members hadn't met for a bylaws revision since the early 90s.

At that last meeting, a fit of feminism struck members, who rooted out what they saw as the remains of a male-run era from the language of the bylaws, first adopted in 1922.

Well, all but one. This time, more than 40 early risers in the basement meeting room performed some major copy editing, changing "chairman" to "chair."

All in favor, say, "Yea."

- APRIL YEE / ASNE Reporter

Reuters covers panda porn, marriage trends

2007-03-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

A story on a Thailand zoo that shows "panda porn" to get males in the mood for mating will be distributed all over the Web.

That's one of the types of stories that Reuters, the London media institution known for finance information and breaking news, counts on for their new lifestyle news service.

Reuters Life! (yes, with an exclamation mark) has put out about 60 stories per day since it launched in June 2006 -- not long after the launch of similar ventures such as ASAP, The Associated Press service targeting readers in their 20s; ForbesLife, a Forbes brand for "good life" content; or The Wall Street Journal's opening of a fashion bureau.

The lifestyle desk counts on a dedicated staff of six reporters on the entertainment beat, four on health and one on workplace, as well as three editors – not to mention feeds from the company's 2,300 staffers worldwide.

Belinda Smith, an Australian who started as a correspondent in Papua New Guinea 14 years ago and most recently headed the company's financial desk in the United States, was tapped to run the New York-based desk.

The service aims for snappy, thoughtful stories with Reuters standards, Smith says.

"We might hear 'Oh you do lifestyle? That's quite jazzy for Reuters,'" Smith says. "But we do those sorts of stories. This is something that reflects how and when people are spending their time and money."

By Jorge Valencia / ASNE Reporter

More free stuff: What to read on the plane ride home

2007-03-28T15:48:00.000-07:00

If you're not already completely saturated by all of the information swirling around the ASNE conferences, meetings and luncheons, head down to the ballroom level.

The long tables at the far end of the floor are stacked high with literature and reports for you to mull over on your plane rides back to real life.

Here is a guide to some of the more interesting highlights:

1. Check out the folders of comic strips by Terri Libenson and John Hambrock. Maybe you'll find Boondocks or Calvin & Hobbes.

2. Grab one of the Stateline.org folders. The Web site is an invaluable resource for following state political writing nationwide.

3. The Project for Excellence in Journalism's "The State of the News Media: An Annual Report on American Journalism" is full of intriguing media-related tidbits. And, amazingly enough, the information in the packet isn't all bad news. For instance, did you know that "66% of those who follow political news prefer newspapers"? That's good news for all you ink-stained editors out there.

4. Check out Harvard University's "Nieman Reports" and "American Journalism Review," which is based out of the University of Maryland. These are essential reading for any serious journalists who want to stay on the up-and-up about industry goings-on.

5. Need somewhere to stash all of your loot? Get a free "Diversity is News"-emblazoned Maynard Institute bag.

-By CONNOR ADAMS SHEETS / ASNE Reporter

For ethics gaffes, most editors are scolding staff

2007-03-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

A majority of editors are scolding their employees and shuffling jobs to address ethical faux pas, according to an ongoing survey of ASNE members by the Missouri School of Journalism.

Nearly 72 percent of those who completed the online poll said they had reprimanded reporters and editors in the past year. And 63 percent reported making personnel changes as well.

Those staffers are not able or willing to question their assumptions, one editor wrote in the anonymous survey.

"It's a nightmare because it's not an event, but rather a state of being," the editor wrote.

But the respondents said they weren't leaving readers in the dark. Of the respondents, 87 percent said they had explained an ethics-related decision in the past year. And a fifth said they had to do so more than six times in the same period.

The survey, run by school’s Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, can still be completed here.

The institute is hosting a reception tomorrow from 5 to 6:30 in the Russell/Hart Rooms.

-By APRIL YEE / ASNE Reporter

Roy Peter Clark sings "My Humps"

2007-03-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

Poynter guru Dr. Roy Peter Clark popped into the ASNE News Lab today. Little did we know that he would blow us away with an a capella rendition of the Black Eyed Peas hit "My Humps."

Audio: Click here to listen to Clark's performance

"What you gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside your trunk?" Clark sang. He then pointed at a staffer. "That person right there is about to die."

The vice president of the Poynter Institute -- dressed today in a navy blue suit and conservative tie -- didn't exactly boast the bodacious curves of the pop band's singer, Fergie.

But, Clark insisted, even a song like that could help him teach writing.

"That song is a story," Clark said. "There's character development, there's sort of a narrative line, there's dialogue. It's here in all music."

Bob Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, has seen Clark perform more than once.

"It's all done in the spirit of good humor," Giles said. "It's a useful way for him to break the ice with his audience."

Clark definitely broke the ice with an audience of 80 on Monday at the National Press Club. While promoting his 2006 book, " Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer," he banged out Jerry Lee Lewis's "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls of Fire."

Music is nothing new to him. At age 15, Clark began playing keyboard in what he calls an "electric surfer music" band. In a nod from one writer to another, the band went by the name T.S. and the Eliots.

- APRIL YEE / ASNE Reporter

Student newspapers hit by increased censorship

2007-03-28T10:05:00.000-07:00

Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said his center usually deals with between 2,000 and 3,000 cases a year regarding censorship in colleges and high schools across the country.

American colleges fail to educate administrators about press freedom, and some of the administrators see censorship as a proud thing to do, Goodman said.

Facing censorship, these student journalists can lose faith in what they can do as media professionals. “If we loose the heart and mind of young journalists, we lose the group as a whole,” Goodman said.

The Hampton Script, a student newspaper at Hampton University, was confiscated three years ago. Our co-ASNE reporter, Marvin Anderson, was a staff writer. As much as I pressed him, he did not want to talk further.

Read more: Teens on shaky ground with First Amendment

By HUONG LE / ASNE Reporter

Are you Superman (or woman)?

2007-03-28T09:36:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Paulson, editor of USA Today and usatoday.com, started the panel discussion, “From Superman to Subpoenas: Defending a Free Press,” by showing comics of the famous superhero.

Paulson knew that he couldn't be Superman, so he chose heroism through journalism. Paulson asked some editors to stand up and complete this sentence: “I got into the newspaper business because…”

Glenn Proctor, executive editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, said he chose journalism because, at that time, no one looked like him. Another editor said she wanted to shed light into some dark corners of the world.

At a time when reporters are being threatened with jail time and public trust of the media is eroding, Paulson said we need to remind ourselves why we chose to be here in the first place.

So why are you here? Add a comment below.

Overheard on the ASNE floor

2007-03-28T09:21:00.000-07:00

The elites stick together here. This morning we spotted Los Angeles Times Assistant Managing Editor Simon K.C. Li, New York Times Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., and Boston Globe Editor Marty Baron chatting on the ASNE convention floor.

Were they enjoying the conference?

"This is ASNE," Sulzberger deadpanned.

Life can be hard at the top. Asked about the trio's next destination, Sulzberger looked to Baron for a cue.

"There's 'Managing Change: Overcoming the Fear Factor," Sulzberger said.

Baron laughed. "I've already overcome the fear factor."

- APRIL YEE / ASNE Reporter

A newspaper with a Web site or a Web site with a newspaper?

2007-03-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

SND changed its name from the Society of Newspaper Design to the Society of News Design. ASNE has also considered changing its name, but maintaining its acronym. So the question plaguing editors is: Am I the editor of a newspaper with a Web site, or a Web site with a newspaper?

Many editors see the two going hand-in-hand, assuming responsibility for and accepting the benefits of each medium.

“They’re one in the same,” said Carolina Garcia, executive editor of The Herald in Monterey County, Calif. “It’s intertwined; you can’t separate the two.”

The Seattle Times’ executive editor David Boardman considers himself the editor of both a newspaper and a Web site.

“Our philosophy is to try to take advantage of both,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is having a Web site that focuses on immediacy and interaction and having a newspaper focused on in-depth reporting.” He added that the newspaper is trying to “integrate our resources and segregate out products.”

Although editors are stressing the importance of their online content, others are still maintaining their premier newspaper status.

“You can’t overlook the 150-year history of McClatchy putting out newspapers,” said Fred Povey, McClatchy-Tribune’s director of news services. But he acknowledges the growing interest in Web sites, saying, “They’re no longer just an add-on.”

USA Today, which continues to have the largest newspaper circulation in the country, is focused on determining where content should go.

“I see myself as the editor of a news organization,” said Ken Paulson, editor and senior vice president of USA Today and USAToday.com. “There’s content that works better on the Web and content that works better in print.” He emphasized that the site is not solely newspaper articles posted online.

-By STEPHANIE WOODROW / ASNE Reporter

Daily Show gets a run for its money with The Onion

2007-03-27T14:02:00.000-07:00

The Onion has satirized the news in print for decades—now it’s moving to video, too.

Other news outlets report on illegal immigration “with facts and information that are very difficult to relate to,” says an anchor on an Onion.com video. Then the Onion team cuts to the heart of the matter with the story of a corporate executive who lost his $800,000 job to a migrant worker willing to settle for $600,000.

“Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, these are the words enshrined at the base of the Statue of Liberty and in the hearts of every true American,” says Onion Correspondent Jean Anne Whorton.

“But those words were written thousands of years ago.”

These and other cutting reports make up the new video content appearing in the Onion’s online home.

Fair and balanced? No. Funny? You decide.

- ALAN J. McCOMBS / ASNE Reporter

Sleep in, drink beer, ASNE president says

2007-03-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

Announcement made at the Small Newspaper Luncheon Tuesday afternoon by ASNE president David A. Zeeck:

"In the past, we've tended to start our committee meetings at 7:30 in the morning on Thursdays. That is an insane thing to do. We are going to start committee hearings at 4 o'clock on Thursday. Beer and wine will be provided."

-By CONNOR ADAMS SHEETS / ASNE Reporter

Find out what's in the swag bag

2007-03-27T11:57:00.000-07:00

We just snagged the ASNE convention bag that everyone here is sporting. Jealous?

Inside the made-in-China Leed's tote, we found a copy of keynote speaker Spike Lee's four-hour documentary on Hurricane Katrina. This DVD of "When the Levees Broke" includes a 105-minute epilogue. The last time we read an epilogue was in our 19th-century American novel class. But don't worry, Shelton, we'll watch it before you get here this Friday.

The swag included a self-help guide on "how to help your newsroom get where it wants to go faster" compiled by ASNE and other organizations, as well as a CD chockful of "Featurettes," the top 100 stories from … PR departments.

Other booty: glossies from Reuters and Tribune Media Services, profiles of editors jockeying to get on the Board, and a list of the other conventioneers, so you can find out where to network your way into a new job.

- STACY A. ANDERSON and APRIL YEE / ASNE Reporter

Editors confess their greatest fears

2007-03-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

Some break out in a sweat at night. Others jump out of bed in the morning worrying about the state of their newspapers. With circulation dropping and readers finding different outlets for the news, editors have plenty of worries.

What are their biggest fears?

“I worry about the future of our product because of all the changes going on in the business.” - David Boardman, executive editor of the Seattle Times

“If there is a bad headline on the front page.” - Glenn Proctor, executive editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch

“That we are not changing things fast enough, are not seeing what the readers want.” - Janet Weaver, executive editor of The Tampa Tribune

-By SHA'DAY JACKSON / ASNE Reporter

We're nowhere near 'parity,' AAJA executive director says

2007-03-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

Rene Astudillo whipped a table out of his ASNE-issued tote. The executive director of the Asian American Journalists Association was mulling a new figure: 3.27 percent. That's the number of Asian Americans that the 2007 ASNE Newsroom Employment Census measured in the workforce this year, a slight increase from 2006.

"There needs to be a more significant change in these numbers," Astudillo said, adding, "If ASNE's goal is to achieve parity by 2025, they're not going to achieve that."

But, Astudillo added, it's not just about the numbers. The challenge is ensuring that editorial decisions at the top reflect local diversity.

"A better way to judge diversity in the news is how the news is covered," he said. "Even if we don't reach parity in the newsroom, it is important that we reflect the communities they are covering."

Read our story on the report here.

-APRIL YEE / ASNE Reporter

February ad revenue dips don't faze editors

2007-03-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

Editors don't seem too concerned by this morning's article in The New York Times about the decline in ad revenue.

"It’s just one month," said Denis Finley, editor of The Virginian-Pilot. "It's no reason to panic."

However, Carolina Garcia, editor of the Monterey County Herald, disagrees.

"I think March is going to be worse," she said, adding that their projections for this month will show a further decline.

The article cited February losses of 10 percent for The Wall Street Journal, 6 percent for The New York Times Company, 5 percent for The Tribune Company, 5 percent for McClatchy, 4 percent for The Boston Globe’s owner New England Media Group and 3.8 percent for Gannett.

"It's obvious one month isn't compensating for the loss of print [revenue]," Finley said. "Eventually, I think online will overtake the losses in print. But it's a scary time."

Garcia said one of the reasons she is attending this conference is to find answers and solutions to this problem. However, her paper's Web site has seen an increase in online readership and a stabilization in online ad revenue.

Just two months ago, The Politico's owner Robert Allbritton told Poynter's Romenesko, "You can get infinitely more advertising money if you have a print product." However, he said that publishing exclusively online is "the future."

Ad spending on newspaper Web sites increased 31.5 percent to $2.7 billion last year, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

"What's really going to suffer is the journalism," Finley said. "Everyone's focused on the money. Not enough people are thinking about the journalism, which is what this business was built on."

-By STEPHANIE WOODROW / ASNE Reporter

When will newspapers die?

2007-03-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

Philip Meyer, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina, once predicted that “the last daily newspaper reader will check out by the year 2044.” Readers could still access news online and through their PDAs, pocket PCs, podcasts and other electronic tools.

When do editors expect the transition to be complete? When will the last newspaper be printed?

“I really don’t care,” said Denis Finley, editor of The Virginian-Pilot. “It’s like predicting the weather – you never know.”

“I think the most important thing is can journalism continue to be a valuable source,” he said.

Few editors believed that the printed versions would become completely extinct. “I think newspapers will be around in one form or another,” said Karen M. Magnuson, editor and vice president/news of the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y. “News will be reported in different ways.”

Tom Warhover, executive editor for innovation at the Missourian, said newspapers would still be around but would “look more like magazines with less breaking news and frequency. … People will look for breaking news online.”

Jeannine A. Guttman, editor and vice president of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, said some readers will always want the news in paper format.

“I don’t see the gloom and doom of newspapers vanishing,” she said.

-SHA’DAY JACKSON / ASNE Reporter

Diversity Roundtable closes the door on reporters

2007-03-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

Whatever goes on in American Society of Newspaper Editors Board meetings must be pretty important. Of course, we wouldn't know, because the meetings are all closed to reporters and photographers.

Oxymoronic for a pack of editors to present their collective boot to a reporter? You’d think, but this journalist was (very politely) removed from the Diversity Roundtable earlier today after being told the presentation was off-limits so participants could be more “frank”.

Why editors can’t also be “frank” on the record to a fellow newsperson is a mystery to me – must be that hounding other non-journalist sources to allow access to even more super-secret board meetings can really take it out of an editor.

Anyway, a few board members were apparently unaware of the exclusivity of their hotshot club. Board member Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, contributed this nugget outside the imposing closed doors of Salon IV this morning: “I’m all for transparency. I have nothing to hide!”

-By TIFFANY HSU / ASNE Reporter

With Craig on their backs, editors ask reporters to change

2007-03-27T08:13:00.000-07:00

With craigslist.org stifling their newspapers' classified sales, ASNE editors said they were beefing up their coverage on the Web, according to a survey run by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Of the nearly 100 editors who responded to the online poll, 46 percent said the free online classifieds site was the culprit behind drops in advertising revenues. Papers with a circulation of more than 100,000 were hardest hit.

Almost all of the editors reported having created multimedia packages online, and 87 percent were putting up online-only content. And staff numbers showed it. Of the editors, 86 percent were requiring reporters to learn how to manipulate video and sound, and 72 percent were hiring journalists solely to run their Web sites.

But it wasn't all about Craig: Editors sounded off on ethics in the survey, too. Read the story here.

Editors can still participate in the poll by going to: freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=ppus0mox8kg3hur273749

- APRIL YEE / ASNE Reporter

What's the Buzz?

2007-03-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

Editors at the 2007 ASNE Convention weighed in on their favorite Web sites at The Buzz. What are your must-see sites? Write about them in the comment section below.

Rafael A. Olmeda weighs in on media consolidation

2007-03-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

Representatives of the Newspaper Association of America dropped by the ASNE Board of Directors meeting today, talking about media consolidation and newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership. According to National Association of Hispanic Journalists President and Sun-Sentinel West Editor Rafael A. Olmeda, the NAA reps said the convergence shift should be an FCC decision, not a congressional vote. Olmeda had this to say:

"Congress watches out for people's interest. Sure, it's all politics sometimes, but we wouldn't want to push through the way people receive their news without their input. The FCC is appointed - it doesn't necessarily reflect the changes in the political landscape. I'm uncomfortable with ramming changes through FCC without people having a say in what happened."

- By TIFFANY HSU / ASNE Reporter

Welcome to the ASNE Reporter blog

2007-03-25T09:22:00.000-07:00

Throughout the week, the ASNE Reporter will get the inside track on the behind-the-scenes, cocktail party and hallway chatter surrounding the 2007 Convention. Check in each day for updates.