ABQJournal.Com: Disinterest and Denial

By Tracy Dingmann

My piece on the Journal’s pay wall a few weeks ago prompted such great comments and tips, I felt compelled to follow up with a post examining the Journal’s website in general.

Because it’s not just the pay wall that frustrates would-be readers of ABQJournal.com.

Readers criticize the site’s cluttered design and say they can never find what they seek. They say ABQJournal.com is difficult and confusing to navigate and complain that the search engine is not much help. They also hit ABQJournal.com for its lack of interactivity. Have any of you tried to post a comment on a story? Have you ever read one?

So I dug around a bit to try to find out why ABQJournal.com looks like it does, and why it seems the paper is not interested in improving it.

Several themes emerged, all tied to one premise/problem: The Albuquerque Journal is not in the news business – it’s in the newspaper business.

What does that mean? It means that, to management, ABQJournal.com is a very low priority. The prevailing opinion at the top is that the website is not important and not worth devoting significant resources to because it doesn’t draw the amount of readers that the print edition does. And there’s not much interest in revamping the entire publishing company to accommodate the online revolution.

Another huge reason that management thinks it’s okay to marginalize ABQJournal.com is the fact that ads on the site pull in a small fraction of the amount that ads in the print edition do. The undervaluing of online ads has always been a problem for websites. But it’s especially vexing for sites run by newspaper companies, who are used to pulling in big money for print ads.

These two factors go a long way toward explaining why the Journal considers ABQJournal.com an expendable proposition. And, I believe these factors are ultimately responsible for all of the other problems with the site.

Disinterest and denial about how drastically the communication industry has changed is why top editors at the Journal don’t care about revamping ABQJournal.com’s confusing, antiquated design.

It’s why, for years, they have kept piling design element on top of design element, instead of taking the time and money to think out a new streamlined layout on a platform that wasn’t created in the 90’s.

It’s why ABQJournal.com is set up to make it difficult for readers to comment on stories – because the legal and practical hassle of moderating comments from readers is a challenge and expense they don’t want to make.

To be fair, the Journal is not the only paper that has resisted adapting its news delivery model to today’s changing media landscape. In fact, it’s very hard to find a newspaper that hasn’t.

But in my opinion, refusing to improve your website and bring it up to date because you want people to go back to buying your paper again is just short of tragic.

Yale Climate Media Forum: I Heart John Fleck

By Tracy Dingmann

It’s a little early for Valentine’s Day – and I’m a little late with this post – but I wanted to call attention to the consistently good writing done by Albuquerque Journal science reporter John Fleck.

Fleck, who covers science, climate change and water issues and blogs here for the paper (subscription required) is a veteran science journalist and admitted weather geek. He also writes a personal blog, and he just published a book on climate change for middle-schoolers called “Tree Rings’ Tale.”

He’s a great writer with a devoted following. Here’s part of what I think makes my former colleague so distinctive among his peers.

Newspaper reporters know that scientists of any kind are a tough crowd to cover, mostly because they’ve spent years earning advanced degrees and mastering their subjects and don’t look kindly upon writers who’s job it is to boil it all down for the masses.

But Fleck, who has been writing for the Journal for nearly 20 years,  has earned the respect of the people and institutions he covers by making science news readable and enjoyable without dumbing it down or getting it wrong.

Late last month, the Yale Climate Media Forum included Fleck in a pretty heady crowd of journalists it singled out for being the best in the nation at covering climate change for a broad print audience.

A story on the site reviewing Associated Press science reporter Seth Borenstein’s efficient smackdown of global warming deniers included this (emphasis mine):

Along with The New York Times‘ Andrew C. Revkin, Science magazine’s Richard Kerr, the Christian Science Monitor’s Peter Spotts, the Albuquerque Journal’s John Fleck, and the Houston Chronicle’s Eric Berger, and a small sampling of additional journalists, Borenstein is considered by most of his professional colleagues to be among the best reporters covering climate change science for a broad print audience.

Praise like this couldn’t happen to a nicer or more talented guy. Good job, John!

Journal Pavilion: When Name Dropping Is a Good Thing

By Denise Tessier

When 2009 passes into history, we will be able to say goodbye, too, to the words “Journal Pavilion .”

A few journalists at the state’s leading newspaper might even be saying good riddance after this week’s announcement that the Journal is letting its naming rights at the venue expire at the end of the year.

The decision by the Journal’s owner nine years ago to put its brand on what had originally been Mesa del Sol Amphitheater was always a business decision, not a journalistic one. Civic pride might have figured into it – and maybe even the caché of having framed tickets bearing famous names hang outside the Ray Cary Auditorium on Albuquerque Publishing Company’s second floor.

But from a journalistic standpoint, it was never a good idea. Would Journal Pavilion receive the same impartial journalistic scrutiny it would have received as Mesa del Sol? Could it?

Despite the best efforts of news reporters and editorial writers who were put in the uncomfortable position of having to write about Journal Pavilion in non-entertainment terms, I think the answers were “no” on both counts.  Hard-hitting reportage and often even by-lines were absent when, early on, questions arose about how much rent Bernalillo County was collecting from the venue. And it was years before the interminable post-concert traffic jams were alleviated by the expansion of University Boulevard to the pavilion site.

The conflict of interest was not lost on Editor& Publisher, which in reporting in December 2000 on the pending naming rights bid, wryly led with this:

After years of criticizing Bernalillo County’s method of funding Albuquerque, N.M.’s, new 12,000-seat concert outdoor arena, the Albuquerque Journal is negotiating to buy the naming rights to the facility.

And right away, E&P noticed that the Journal’s own news coverage about the naming deal was showing signs of what it called “awkwardness,” noting:

A recent article in the Journal about the naming rights issue indicated SFX was negotiating with three casinos, a car dealership, and “a leading New Mexico newspaper,” referring to — but not naming — itself.

Not surprisingly, the story in this week’s Sunday Journal on A-3 announcing “Journal To Drop Pavilion Naming Rights” (no online version available) was a “Journal Staff Report.” Quoting President and Publisher T.H. Lang, it said the Journal won’t renew naming rights when they expire in December:

. . .based on a number of factors including the economy, scheduling of shows and the uncertainty of what promotions we will be allowed to do from show to show. . .”

We feel we can achieve stronger marketing results by reallocating the marketing dollars we now devote to the naming rights.

The story quotes Dave Aust, zone vice president of Live Nation, Inc., which operates the county-owned venue, as saying the company is talking to “several companies” about becoming the new naming partner.

While it was never disclosed how much the Journal had paid for the rights, a perusal of stories about naming rights online shows they can run into the millions, or close to a million spread over a number of years, depending on the market.

My colleague Tracy Dingmann was on the arts desk at the Journal when Mesa del Sol was renamed Journal Pavilion, and she remembers getting calls from people who thought – understandably – that the Journal owned the venue itself, not just its name. To further refresh our memories, she got in touch with former Journal writer Leanne Potts, who was entertainment writer at the time.

Another Opportunity Missed

By Denise Tessier

Well aware that it’s operating with a skeleton staff, I held out little hope the Albuquerque Journal would send a reporter to cover the “Mexico in a Nutshell” speech by Carlos Fuentes the day before Halloween. As expected, the state’s largest daily did not provide reportage from the lecture that drew nearly 300 people to the Student Union Building at the University of New Mexico.

Regular readers of this site are probably not surprised to hear that I think they should have.

Fuentes, perhaps best known for his novel El Gringo Viejo (The Old Gringo) because it was made into a movie, is so renowned in Mexico for his essays and historical short stories his works have been part of Mexican school curriculums since the 1960s. Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez called him “Mexico’s greatest living writer” in declaring Oct. 30 “Carlos Fuentes Day.”

Considering he is a historian and observer of Mexico now in his eighth decade of life, his talk offered a rare opportunity to gain insight into the country’s history and, more importantly, to hear first-hand an articulate expert’s perspective on what should be done to alleviate the turmoil that is racking our closest neighbor to the south.

But both the Journal and Chavez apparently felt touting the author in advance was enough; according to the news account of Fuentes’ talk in the UNM Daily Lobo , Chavez didn’t attend Fuentes’ lecture either.

Fuentes’ address was the last in a UNM series of three lectures on Mexican themes and immigration that launched Sept. 15 with a talk by another author, Sam Quinones, followed by that of former Mexican President Vicente Fox, the Journal’s inadequate coverage of which I’ve already lamented.

As the leading newspaper in a state sharing both a border and name with Mexico, the Journal is missing an opportunity to provide a strong voice and platform for dialogue on immigration and drug issues, both of which were touched on in the lectures by Fuentes and Fox.

Especially pertinent was Fuentes’ perspective on the Mexican drug wars, which was markedly different from Fox’s take. Interestingly, neither speaker included drug war comments as part of their lectures, but made them in response to questions from their audiences.

Fox couched his comment in bridge-building terms, saying current President Felipe Calderon has armed the Mexican military in a war against cartels and crime “ to cut the supply of drugs to this nation (the U.S.),” saying that Mexico is doing this for “your sons, your nation.”

Fuentes was more direct, saying Mexico’s drug war problems are “inseparable from the demand in the United States. Our two societies must come together (to come up with a solution).”

Many of those interested in Mexico are familiar with the names of the Mexican drug cartel leaders because of courageous media coverage in that country. In striking contrast, Fuentes demanded, “Who are the drug lords in this country?”

He concluded his brief answer with a simple statement:

I am in favor of decriminalizing and legalizing all drugs.

Journal Skips the Scarantino Train

By Tracy Dingmann

The blogosphere and traditional media have been all atwitter today about a report posted by the New Mexico Watchdog website that supposedly shows how Lt. Gov. Diane Denish improperly spent $225,000 of federal stimulus money back in 2003 and 2004.

From the report, here’s the money quote (or “nut graf,” for all you journalism folks):

Lt. Governor Diane Denish used $225,000 in federal funds to pay for a driver to shuttle her to meetings and press events, a contractor to take Christmas pictures and write Christmas cards, a lawyer to make hotel reservations, opinion polling and public relations services. The money was given to her for “various projects” by Governor Bill Richardson. The money came from unallocated federal fiscal stimulus funds transferred to the New Mexico treasury under the 2003 Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act.

Report author and New Mexico Watchdog editor Jim Scarantino says he based the report on his inspection of public records.

But today, several of the findings in the report are being refuted by an unlikely source – the Albuquerque Journal.

I say unlikely, because first of all, the Journal usually completely ignores blogs and bloggers – unless, come to think of it, the blogger uncovers something that makes a prominent Democrat look really bad.

I also say unlikely because the report in question was done by the self-styled anti-big-government, anti-tax, anti-regulation Rio Grande Foundation (RGF).  Regular readers of the Journal know RGF has a BFF relationship with the “libertarian-oriented think tank,” as it dutifully calls the Albuquerque based group in its story today.  As New Mexico Independent commentator Arthur Alpert noted last week, the Journal’s editorial page runs so many Rio Grande Foundation columnists and quotes so many of their economists, it  “reads like a Rio Grande Foundation newsletter.”

A little history here. RGF was founded in 2000 by former Republican State Representative and Attorney General Hal Stratton, who stepped down as the organization’s head when he was nominated by President Bush to become chairman of that bastion of federal regulatory power, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. However, RGF really came into prominence when, John Dendahl, who also served as state GOP chairman from 1994-2003, took over as the think tank’s president.  During Dendahl’s RGF years, his syndicated columns in the  Journal served as a convenient run-up to his own Republican Party candidacy for governor in 2006 against Bill Richardson.

Finally, the Journal’s lukewarm response to the report seemed unlikely because, until recently, Scarantino himself was one of the Journal’s featured columnists. Word is that he quit that gig to devote his energies to RGF’s new investigative website.

So what does the Journal’s story actually say about Scarantino’s report? The paper, who unlike Scarantino, actually spoke to Denish’s office about the allegations in the report, says:

Denish provided documents showing that the Christmas card printing costs were paid for with funding from her political campaign fund, the Committee to Elect Diane Denish, not the stimulus money. (Emphasis mine.)

Hmm. The Journal continues:

However, the records do not appear to contradict Scarantino’s finding that a Lieutenant Governor’s Office employee was paid with federal money for part of 8 hours of work on the cards. (Emphasis mine.)

Oh wow! Part of 8 hours of work! That’s a staggering sum. Now I understand the fuss.

Regarding Scarantino’s claim about Denish using federal funds to pay for “opinion polling,” the paper says that Denish’s office has not disputed that.

But, the Journal notes:

However, the poll appears to be a detailed, scientific tool for addressing children’s issues in New Mexico, which has been one of Denish’s central projects as lieutenant governor. The poll was conducted by Research and Polling Inc. of Albuquerque in 2003, and findings were compiled in a more than 100-page report to be used to create state policy. It was commissioned by the Children’s Cabinet, created by Richardson and headed by Denish.

So, in its initial story about Scarantino’s report, the Journal takes the thunder out of some of the most outrageous-sounding allegations. I wonder what a little more investigating will do to the rest of the claims.

In a interview that will air Friday on KNME’s “In Focus,” Denish herself called Scarantino’s allegations “a patently false lie.”

But don’t expect this lukewarm reception to stop Denish’s opponents from seizing upon Scarantino’s report.

Late in the story, the Journal notes that Republican gubernatorial candidates Allen Weh and Susanna Martinez immediately pounced on the report and are calling for formal investigations into the matter.

(Editor’s Note: I know I said I would have a post about the Journal’s website readership today. But then this came up! I’ll have that post tomorrow. Blogger’s perogative!)

The Journal’s Pay Wall of Pain

By Tracy Dingmann

One of the most frequent complaints I hear about the Journal doesn’t concern the paper’s content at all.

It’s about the paper’s pay wall – or the insistence that online readers who don’t subscribe to the print edition must pay a subscription fee for unfettered access to online content.

When the Journal installed its pay wall in 2001, it was one of only a few newspapers to do so.

At the time, many in the faltering newspaper business thought paid online sites just might be the future of the industry.  After all, there had to be some way to harness the financial power of all those eyeballs going online for news and entertainment.  Lock it down and make them pay!

So the Journal installed its pay wall in 2001 and never looked back.  But even in the little blurb on the Journal’s site that explains “Why We Charge,” Journal publisher T.H. Lang seems hopeful that readers will eventually come back to the good old newsprint version with its expensive department store display ads and handy cable TV listings and hard-to-read classifieds.

“By making our Web site for members only, ABQjournal.com hopes to strengthen its bond to the printed newspaper and to deliver electronically the most comprehensive and best edited news reports from around the state,” Lang wrote.

Well, turns out that didn’t happen. And it’s never going to happen.

Online information wants to be free and linkable and widely accessible, and people who surf the web (and read the ads and buy things and  return again and again to your site)  get very annoyed when they hit pay walls during their travels.

On the Journal site, non-subscribers can read one Journal story, but only if they agree to watch an online ad. If they want to read another Journal story, they have to watch another ad. Or they can browse the whole site for a day, but only after they watch an ad. And they can only do that twice a week.

Those kind of restrictions make people very, very angry.

It’s one thing for Albuquerque readers, who live here and can maybe scrounge up a copy of the paper from that day or haul their ass out to the Albuquerque Publishing Company library for older issues.

But what about people who don’t live in Albuquerque who want to read New Mexico news from the state’s largest paper? Or distant researchers or students or journalists or casual searchers who want access to certain stories only the Albuquerque Journal has written about?

Focusing on the hometown reader/subscriber is a nice thought, but it is a strategy that’s embarrassingly quaint – and infuriating – for the times.

Ultimately, I think the real victim in all this is the Journal. When a newspaper hides its stories behind a pay wall, it stops Google searches in their tracks and removes itself from the global information game.  Pay walls don’t just engender ill will among would-be readers, they go against the very heart of the way information flows today.

I thought about this recently when I came across an article on the journalism review site Poynter.org that examines just how newspaper pay sites are doing.  The article, originally posted on paidcontent.org, looks at several pay sites, including the Journal, and evaluates their experiences.

This piece certainly serves up some interesting data about our notoriously secretive hometown paper, doesn’t it!

But for me, perhaps the most telling piece of information was a quote from assistant managing editor Donn Friedman, who defends the Journal’s pay wall with this bottom line:

“We are still committed to the print retention model and the idea that our content has value.”

Looks like that pay wall is not going anywhere, folks.

Stay tuned for a post tomorrow about how the Journal website readership compares to other local sites!

Opinion on Top of Opinion

By Denise Tessier

A former Albuquerque Journal colleague and I recently compared notes on something we’d noticed about the paper’s handling of the power struggle at the Socorro Electric Cooperative.  What we’ve noticed is that the introduction of the UpFront column – that hybridization of news and opinion that appears daily on the front page – has created a sea-change in terms of standard practice on the editorial page.

To be clear, my former colleague and I concur that the coverage about the co-op and its board members in columns by Thomas J. Cole (on March 28 , June 13 , and Oct. 21, subscription required) appear to capture well what is happening at the co-op in Socorro.

What’s interesting is that officially, there have been no news stories about it. Instead, there have been these three pieces by Cole, clearly marked at each column’s end with the disclaimer that “UpFront is a daily front-page opinion column”.

Twice the Journal has followed these columns with editorials weighing in further on the subject (March 31 and Oct. 24).

Technically, that’s piling opinion on top of opinion.

And that is the departure from editorial-page standard operating procedure that raises our eyebrows.

Mayor’s Ball Booty Revealed!

By Tracy Dingmann

Sometimes you write a blog post just for the headline. This isn’t necessarily one of those times.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the baffling failure of Mayor Marty Chavez’s administration to respond to a public information request from a local resident about what exactly happened to some $750,000 apparently raised by the mayor’s charity balls in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

I classified it as a ABQJournalWatch topic because the resident wrote about her quest for public information in a letter to the editor of the Journal. I wanted to know why Journal readers had to read about this serious issue in a mere letter to the editor, and not in a big fat story by the Journal’s investigative reporters.

Today blogger Barb Wold (once again) does my job, writing a post about what actually happened to the money raised by the 2009 ball.

Wold writes that, according to release from the mayor’s office today, the mayor has distributed the proceeds from the 2009 Mayor’s Charity Ball thusly:

• $75,000 to the Center for Developmental Disabilities (CDD) Autism Center
• $21,000 to the Albuquerque Family Advocacy Center
• $15,000 to the NM BioPark Society

Well, that accounts for one year, I guess.

But I’m still wondering why the Journal isn’t digging into the rest of this particular story, which would normally seem to be just its cup of tea.

The Journal Steps In It On The Public Option

By Tracy Dingmann

Denise and I knew when we started this blog that we were not the only people who were often made frustrated or angry by the slant of certain stories or editorials in the Albuquerque Journal.

Aside from us, most people who get angry at the Journal gripe about it to their friends or maybe fire off a letter to the editor.

But today progressive blogger Barb Wold lets the Journal have it on her blog, Democracy For New Mexico, for what she documents as the Journal’s dismissive and misleading take on the public option.

In fact, Wold, says it so well, I’m simply going to link to her post. Check it out – she is on fire!

Thanks for doing my job today, Barb!

The Journal Gets the Memo on Teabagging – Literally

By Tracy Dingmann

This cartoon appeared in the Albuquerque Journal last week, prompting a memo to department heads.

Is there anybody out there who DOESN’T know what teabagging means?

Early on, the term was heartily adopted by some in the so-called “tea party” movement of tax protesters that sprung up earlier this year.

But the term was quickly dropped by nearly all in the movement after they learned it described a sexual act that can’t be described in a family newspaper.

The term was later used widely to ridicule the movement.

That was quite a few months ago.

Apparently, some department heads at the Journal didn’t still know the provenance of the term or the derogatory context of its use to describe the movement –  until they literally got the memo from Managing Editor Karen Moses on Thursday.

Here’s the memo, sent on Oct. 22 to all Journal department heads:

Department heads:

The term teabagger and teabagging has appeared recently in the Journal.  In most cases, it has referred strictly to those participating in the political tea parties being held around the country.

But because it does have a sexual meaning, we should not use it in future stories or columns. Please be sure your staff is aware of this.

Thanks, Karen

The memo follows the publication of the above cartoon, which appeared on the Journal North editorial page following the opening of a special legislative session at the Roundhouse.  A reader called my attention to the cartoon at the time, but I didn’t know what to make of it. Was it in incredibly bad taste, or merely clueless? I didn’t know what to think.

Now that I’ve seen this memo, I guess I know the answer.

Wow.