Spending on News Quality is Good for Newspapers

Investing money to improve the quality of news coverage actually makes newspapers more profitable, a study by researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia has found.

Murali Montrala and Esther Thorson led a team of researchers to examine profitability at newspapers. They analyzed financial data for small to medium-sized newspapers and found that the quality of news coverage strongly influenced the bottom line.

It should be no surprise that producing a better product leads to better profits. But it must be for the corporations that own newspapers — and the Wall Street firms that are flogging newspaper management to lay off reporters and editors to slash newsroom expenses in what now looks like a self-defeating effort to uphold large profit margins. "If you lower the amount of money spent in the newsroom, then pretty soon the news product becomes so bad that you begin to lose money," Thorson was quoted in a news release as saying. She is a professor of advertising and associate dean for graduate studies in the School of Journalism at Mizzou.

The study by Thorson and her colleagues shows that readers are deserting newspapers not just because of competition from the Web but also because newspapers are offering their readers less content and lower quality. Interviewed this morning on American Public Media's Marketplace program, Thorson said, "You know, I'm worried about the newspapers in all the little cities across the United States. They are our one depth instrument for allowing citizens to understand what's going on in their own communities. We're losing those just as fast as we're losing content and quality in any of our news sources."

-- T.Y.

2006 was a Scorcher

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York reports that last year was the sixth warmest year in a century. Different scientific groups have come up with slightly different rankings. But there seems to be no question that 2006 was one of the warmest years on record.

Global Warming Bumped by Anna and the Astronaut Scandal

Matthew Nisbet reports on his blog Framing Science that the week after the release of the IPCC report on climate change, the issue failed to make it into the top five news stories. According to the News Coverage Index of the Project for Excellent in Journalism, Iraq policy and events, Smith's death, the presidential campaign, and the obsessed astronaut in diapers, pushed global warming out of the spotlight. (Well, I guess it really doesn't get much better than an obsessed astronaut in diapers allegedly attempting to commit murder.)

As Nisbet points out, there was plenty to report on global warming in the aftermath of the IPCC report, including the fact that both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German PM Andrea Merkel both said they will be pushing for greater action. But it was all Anna all the time on the cable news channels, as a disgruntled Jack Cafferty himself pointed out on CNN. On air, according to the PEJ, he said, "That’s the only story we reported [yesterday] for two solid hours and we weren’t the only ones. . .Her death was tabloid gold and apparently, we just couldn’t help ourselves.”

Commenting on the tabloid sensitibility of the cable networks, none other than Bill O'Reilly pointed out on his Fox News radio talk show today that when Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s airplane went down years ago, his network focused a camera on the waters off of Long Island for hours on end. They went with that story for an interminable period — with little other than wave-tossed waters to show. Maybe they hoped that the body would just bob to the surface. This time around, they got their body, when Anna Nicole's so-called "death video" turned up (showing her being administered CPR as she was rushed to an ambulance).

How could the single biggest threat to our planet's life support system ever hope to compete?

Global Warming Increasingly a Policy Story

According to a a report from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 106 bills, resolutions and amendments addressing global warming were introduced into the 109th Congress, which ended in December. This is up from just seven in the 105th Congress (1997-1998).

Legislative activity on climate change has climbed steadily, year by year. The Pew report also notes that the issue is increasingly becoming bipartisan, with proposals being introduced on both sides of the aisle. "The growing interest suggests that a bipartisan consensus is developing around the need to address climate change," the report concluded.

With the Democrats now in power, we might expect a wave of new legislation. I wonder whether the Bush Administration will continue to hold back the tide of bills that would institute mandatory caps on carbon emissions, or a carbon tax. It should be an interesting year.

Environmental Journalism at its Best

Writing for one of our favorite publications, High Country News, Michelle Nijhuis has won a prestigious science journalism award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The prize was given for a series of three stories on climate change in the West. One of the stories, Save Our Snow, describes how Aspen is trying to come to grips with the reality of climate change. Another, The Ghosts of Yosemite, integrates history and the pioneering work of Joseph Grinnell in Yosemite National Park with current day research by biologists who are documenting the changing composition of species in the Sierra brought about by environmental shifts, including a warming climate. And a third story, Dust and Snow, describes the possible impact of a combination of increasing fallout of dust in the Colorado Rockies, perhaps from over-grazing in the Southwest, and increasing temperatures from global warming.

Michelle Nijhuis represents one of the very best in our profession. I urge you to check our her stories to see how she so deftly writes about technical subjects in a compelling and engaging way. As her editors once said of her, she "possesses both the mind of a scientist and the heart of a poet." And she understood early on that a rise in global average temperature doesn't really mean much. What really matters is what's happening on the ground in particular places, like Yosemite, and how people living in particular regions such as the West will be affected by a changing climate. Congratulations Michelle!

-- T.Y.

Hope for Storing Carbon?

Carbon dioxide produced by power plants and other industrial facilities can be safely stored underground, helping to avert global warming, recent research by MIT scientists suggests. The scientists say their research shows that the CO2 should not resurface and enter the atmosphere, as is feared.

Without carbon sequestration, expanding use of coal to produce electricity would present significant climate risks. But many scientific, technical and economic hurdles remain, not the least of which is making sure that pumping CO2 underground isn't done in vain.

Reframing Global Warming While Equating Skeptics with Holocaust Deniers

Although global warming still can't compete with Iraq and the so-called "death tape" of Anna Nicole Smith (yes, one has surfaced on the web showing paramedics administering CPR), it continues to garner attention from columnists and pundits. Toay's installment comes from Ellen Goodman in her Boston Globe syndicated column.

"It may be, paradoxically, that framing this issue in catastrophic terms ends up paralyzing instead of motivating us," Goodman writes. "Remember the Time magazine cover story: 'Be Worried. Be Very Worried.' The essential environmental narrative is a hair-raising consciousness-raising: This is your Earth. This is your Earth on carbon emissions." Faced with the catastrophe, people just go into a state of denial.

Goodman calls for a reframing of the issue: "Can we change from debating global warming to preparing? Can we define the issue in ways that turn denial into action? In America what matters now isn't environmental science, but political science."

In his excellent blog, "Framing Science," Matthew Nisbet aplauds Goodman for writing "one of the best summaries I've seen on just how central public communication is to this issue," and for issuing a "call to arms" on reframing climate change.

But there are two issues Nisbett does not discuss. They deserve an airing. First, Goodman indulges in a typical liberal rhetorical maneuver to frame the issue of climate change skepticism in apocalyptic terms, not only undercutting her laudable main point but also casting grave doubt on her credibility.

"Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future," Goodman writes.

Excuse me, but being skeptical about the scientific basis for global warming is nowhere near on a par with Holocaust denial. That is an utterly offensive statement — one that seems to comes up more and more in liberal discourse about climate change. If this is reframing the issue, count me out. I'll take run-of-the-mill catastrophism, thank you very much.

The second issue is this: What role should journalists play in reframing climate change from one of catastrophe in the making to a moral and religious issue, a corruption of science issue, and an economic issue, as Nisbet puts it?

I would argue that it's not the job of a daily news reporter to reframe the issue, at least not per se. A daily reporter's job is to ask challenging questions designed to elicit news and essential information, and to go where the story leads. And if the story leads to new details about catastrophe on the way, that's where we have to go. But it is also a reporter's job to try to stay ahead of the story. And if doing that means asking experts like Mathew Nisbet whether a reframing of the issue is in the offing, or essential, that would seem like a great story to me. Moreover, the questions reporters ask may well contribute to a reframing of the issue. Should this be a reporter's mission? That word "mission" makes me nervous. We're supposed to report the news, not make it. On the other hand, if something is happening out there — if others are taking on this mission, that's where we need to go with our reporting.

And please do note: I'm making a deliberate distinction between daily news journalism and other forms. As a magazine writer, I would feel no qualms at trying to change the terms of the debate.

Lastly, I see a story here about the expropriation of "Holocaust denier" for use with reference to global warming skeptics. I suspect there are some people who are mighty angry at Ellen Goodman today. That would make an excellent jumping off point for a potentially compelling story.

— T.Y.