FULL ARTICLES

A BATTLE OVER PROGRAMMING AT NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

A Battle Over Programming at National Public Radio
By Stephen Labaton
The New York Times
May 16, 2005

www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/business/media/16radio.html

Executives at National Public Radio are increasingly at odds with the Bush appointees who lead the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday.

The corporation’s board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations.

Top officials at NPR and member stations are upset as well about the corporation’s decision to appoint two ombudsmen to judge the content of programs for balance. And managers of public radio stations criticized the corporation in a resolution offered at their annual meeting two weeks ago urging it not to interfere in NPR editorial decisions.

The corporation’s chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, has also blocked NPR from broadcasting its programs on a station in Berlin owned by the United States government.

Mr. Tomlinson denied several requests last week to discuss the relationship between the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR, but he issued a one-sentence statement saying that he looked forward to “working through any differences that may exist between our institutions.” In a column last week in The Washington Times and in an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s talk show on PBS, he repeated his belief that public broadcasting’s reputation of being left-leaning was a problem.

Mr. Tomlinson has been waging a campaign to correct what he and other conservatives see as a liberal bias in public television programming. That effort has been criticized by leaders of public television who say it poses a threat to their editorial independence. At the request of two senior Democratic members of Congress, the inspector general at the corporation is examining whether Mr. Tomlinson’s decision to monitor only one television program, “Now,” with Bill Moyers, and his decision to retain a White House official who helped create guidelines for the two ombudsmen may have violated a law that is supposed to insulate public broadcasting from politics.

But the law also assigns the corporation the responsibility of ensuring balance and objectivity in programming, a function that Mr. Tomlinson says is of paramount importance for the sustained viability and political support of public broadcasting.

About a quarter of the corporation’s $400 million budget goes to radio, with most of the rest to television. NPR recently received a huge bequest from the estate of Joan B. Kroc, the widow of the founder of McDonald’s, and it gets only about 1 percent of its overall funds directly from the corporation. But its member stations are far more reliant on the corporation’s money, and they use a significant part of that to buy programs produced by NPR and others.

Last month, the corporation’s board, which is dominated by Republicans named by President Bush, told the staff at a meeting that it should prepare to redirect the relatively modest number of grants available for radio programs away from national news, officials at the corporation and NPR said.

“We heard sentiments from the board that they are interested in support of more music,” said Vincent Curran, a senior vice president in charge of the radio division. He said that the board had made no final decisions on funds.

Participants in that meeting said there was a brief discussion by board members in which one of them, Gay Hart Gaines, talked about the need to change programming in light of a conversation she had had with a taxi driver about his listening habits. Ms. Gaines, a Republican fund-raiser and the head of the political action committee of Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, did not return a call to her office seeking comment.

In recent years, the corporation has provided funds for NPR programs like “The Tavis Smiley Show” and “Day to Day.” A third NPR program, “News and Notes,” recently applied for money. Mr. Tomlinson has told some board members that the corporation would no longer provide funds for “Weekend America,” a public affairs program produced by Minnesota Public Radio, people briefed on those discussions said.

Over the objections of senior NPR executives, the corporation decided in April to appoint the two ombudsmen to monitor radio and television content. At a meeting in February, Kevin Klose, NPR’s president, was told by Mr. Tomlinson that the corporation would have a liberal ombudsman and a conservative one, participants in the meeting said. They said Mr. Klose told Mr. Tomlinson that this idea showed a fundamental misunderstanding of both journalism and the role of an ombudsman.

NPR has had its own ombudsman for the last five years, and executives there say they are concerned that having two at the agency that provides funds for programs could lead to editorial interference.

The resolution from representatives of public radio stations that was presented at the recent meeting in Washington denounced the move, and called on the corporation to “refrain from interfering in constitutionally protected content decisions” and to act as a firewall to insulate public broadcasting from politics. The lack of a quorum prevented a vote on the resolution, but a poll of the more than 80 people there showed unanimous support for it.

Late last year, without notifying board members or NPR, Mr. Tomlinson contacted S. Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a research group, about conducting a study on whether NPR’s Middle East coverage was more favorable to Arabs than to Israelis, Mr. Lichter said. He added that although there were follow-up conversations as recently as February, officials at the corporation had not moved ahead with the project.

A spokesman for the corporation, Eben Peck, said it had not decided how it would monitor coverage of the Middle East on NPR.

“We’re still assessing and looking at various methodologies that would allow an assessment of NPR’s Middle East coverage,” Mr. Peck said.

Other officials said Mr. Tomlinson had heard complaints about the coverage from a board member, Cheryl Halpern, a former chairwoman of the Republican Jewish Coalition and leading party fund-raiser whose family has business interests in Israel. The corporation has also heard complaints from Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of California.

Besides his role at the corporation, Mr. Tomlinson heads the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which supervises most United States government broadcasts overseas, including those of the Voice of America. He has continued the policy of his predecessors on that board of blocking NPR from putting its programs on a Berlin station that the German government gave to the United States in the early 1990’s after reunification. NPR, which has a significant presence overseas, has long sought to enter Berlin, the largest radio market in Western Europe.

Mr. Tomlinson has instead favored programming offered by a European business executive that includes newscasts produced by the Voice of America, which is restricted by law from broadcasting in English in most European countries. German regulators are considering the two options.

In a 2003 letter to Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Tomlinson suggested that it would further the national interest to use the station to broadcast programs by Voice of America rather than NPR.

Some NPR officials suggest that Mr. Tomlinson has a conflict of interest as the head of both the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“It certainly calls into question where his allegiance lies,” said Tim Eby, chairman of NPR and manager of the public radio stations run by Ohio State University in Columbus.

Mr. Peck, the corporation spokesman, said Mr. Tomlinson “does not think there is a conflict of interest.”

In an interview last week, Mr. Eby said NPR executives had been particularly worried because they were not getting full information about what had been happening at the corporation.

“Everybody has been concerned in a lot of ways because there’s been a real lack of transparency about what’s been going on there,” he said.

 

GAINING CONFIDENCE: ‘NY TIMES’ RELEASES KEY INTERNAL REPORT

Gaining Confidence: ‘N.Y. Times’ Releases Key Internal Report
By E&P Staff
The Editor and Publisher
May 9, 2005

www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000912502

An internal committee at The New York Times has recommended steps to increase readers’ confidence in the newspaper, including reducing errors, increasing coverage of religion, “rural areas” and “middle America,” making reporters and editors more accessible, and possibly starting a blog.

Executive editor Bill Keller, who had asked the panel to study questions of journalistic credibility, endorsed the recommendations in Monday’s editions, calling the report “a sound blueprint for the next stage of our campaign to secure our accuracy, fairness and accountability.”

The committee proposed taking steps including encouraging high-ranking editors to write a regular column dealing with the internal workings of the Times -- this is in addition to the fairly new public editor’s column. Other suggestions include using the Internet to provide documents used for stories and transcripts of interviews, and further curtailing the use of anonymous sources. It saw no point in boycotting background briefings.

Recommendation #4 reads: “Consider creating a Times blog that promotes interaction with readers.”

As for accessibility: “The Times makes it harder than any other major American newspaper for readers to reach a responsible human being,” the committee’s 16-page report said. It also noted that the paper printed 3,200 corrections last year.

The committee was made up of 11 editors, 6 reporters, a copy editor and a photographer.

The committee also recommended that the paper “increase our coverage of religion in America” and “cover the country in a fuller way,” with more reporting from rural areas and of a broader array of cultural and lifestyle issues. The report will be available today on the Times company’s Web site, www.nytco.com.

The “credibiity” committee also declared that The Times should respond to its critics, nothing “there are those who love to hate The Times.” The report urged The Times to explain itself “actively and earnestly” to critics and to readers often confused when charges go unanswered. “We strongly believe it is no longer sufficient to argue reflexively that our work speaks for itself,” the report stated. “In today’s media environment, such a minimal response damages our credibility,” it added.

The Times this morning quoted early reaction to the report from Orville Schell, dean of the journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley, who said The Times had to strike a balance between “smart public relations” and “letting your work speak for itself ....

“I would be loath to see a paper like The Times begin to spin its image too ardently through public relations techniques,” he said. “But I do firmly believe that the paper has to defend itself.”

 

NYTIMES.COM TO OFFER SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE

NYTimes.com to Offer Subscription Service
By Timothy Williams
The New York Times
May 17, 2005

www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/business/media/17times.html?ex=1118894400&en=46be4207b87babb5&ei=5087

The New York Times announced yesterday that it would offer a new subscription-based service on its Web site, charging users an annual fee to read its Op-Ed and news columnists, as the newspaper seeks ways to capitalize on the site’s popularity.

Most material on the Web site, NYTimes.com, will remain free to users, The Times said, but columnists from The Times and The International Herald Tribune will be available only to users who sign up for TimesSelect, which will cost $49.95 a year. The service will also include access to The Times’s online archives, as well as other features.

The service, which is scheduled to start in September, will be provided free to home-delivery subscribers of the newspaper.

A decision by The Times about charging users for portions of its Web site had been expected for months in the media industry. While some efforts by other newspapers to charge for content online have worked, others have been withdrawn, including most recently one by The Los Angeles Times, which decided last week to stop charging users a fee for its online entertainment listings, reviews and criticism.

Though advertising on Web sites accounts for only 2 to 3 percent of the revenues of most newspapers, it is the fastest-growing source of revenue. Still, many newspaper Web sites fear that charging money for Internet content may send readers to free sites, with advertisers following close behind.

The New York Times’s decision to charge a fee came after about a year of study, said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the Times Company and publisher of the newspaper.

Mr. Sulzberger said that while some Internet users accustomed to free content might not be willing to pay, many others would be attracted by the online package of columnists, archives and other material.

“The advertising growth on the Web has been just spectacular the last few years,” he said. “But like any business, it’s going to mature over time, and when that happens, it will flatten and then you’ll get into the normal cycles just like we do it on print. And at that point you’re really going to need to have another revenue model.”

He added, “This is going to help sustain the quality of the information that we make available.”

Alexia S. Quadrani, a senior managing director at Bear, Stearns who follows the publishing and advertising industries, said The Times’s plan made sense as a business model.

“All newspapers are looking for new advertising revenue and The New York Times realizes they have high-quality content and are looking at other ways to capitalize on it,” she said. “The key is to that you want to maximize the dollars you get on the Internet without alienating the people.”

In April, The Times’s Web site had 1.7 million unique daily visitors. Its daily newspaper circulation in March 2005, the most recent month available, was 1,136,433.

The Times already charges for some content, including its crossword puzzle, news alerts and online archive. Articles are free for seven days after publication; a fee is charged once they are archived.

TimesSelect will also provide subscribers access to TimesPast, the paper’s archives; exclusive multimedia, including audio and photo essays and video; TimesFile, a tool that will help users organize articles; and Ahead of The Times, which will allow subscribers to take an early look at articles that will appear in The New York Times Magazine, and the newspaper’s Travel, Sunday Arts and Real Estate sections.

Martha Goldstein, a spokeswoman for The Los Angeles Times, said the paper still might charge for certain portions of its site.

Caroline Little, publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the online media subsidiary of the Washington Post Company, said a fee is “something we’re looking at very carefully,” but added, “there haven’t really been a lot of successful ventures.”

The Wall Street Journal, which is the only national paper to charge for all of its online content, requires a $79 annual fee - $39 a year to those who have a newspaper subscription.

Todd Larsen, president of consumer electronic publishing at Dow Jones & Company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal, said he believed that his paper’s approach could be sustainable for a general-interest newspaper like The Times.

“We’re happy to see The New York Times acknowledging the importance of subscription-based revenue that we have long seen as a key element,” he said.

John Tierney, an Op-Ed columnist in The Times, said he had mixed feelings about the change.

“The capitalist in me applauds any effort to make money from these columns,” he said. “The columnist in me would rather not lose any readers.”

Clyde Haberman, a columnist for The Metro Section, said that he thought the experiment would work, but “I hope that if it does fail, they don’t decide the reason was us.”

 

WSJ TURNS TABLOID

WSJ turns tabloid
By Jason Deans
The Guardian
May 9, 2005

media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,7495,1479726,00.html

The Wall Street Journal Europe is following in the footsteps of the Independent and the Times, switching from broadsheet to tabloid format from October.

WSJ Europe and its Asian counterpart will both change to tabloid from October 17 in a move that will also see the two titles more closely aligned with WSJ.com.

The switch will allow the papers to offer more pages of colour advertising, including colour ads on the front page for the first time.

Dow Jones, the publisher of the WSJ, is also promising more regionally specific content, more stories in the European and Asian editions and fewer pieces that run over from one page to another.

The company said it expected the tabloid move, and related cost reductions, to produce a saving around £9m a year from 2006.

As part of the tabloid switch, a number of WSJ news posts at its European HQ in Brussels and Asian base in Hong Kong will be relocated to the US, where the paper is expanding its staff in preparation for the launch of a weekend edition in September.

Among journalists moving to the US will be the WSJ Europe editor and associate publisher, Frederick Kempe, who will return to New York on August 1 to become assistant managing editor, international.

The managing editor of the WSJ Europe, Raju Narisetti, will replace Kempe as editor.

WSJ Europe has a circulation of just over 86,000, while the Asian edition of the title sells nearly 81,000 daily.