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 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!

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.

Journal Reader: Noon’s Energy Claim “Doesn’t Add Up”

By Tracy Dingmann

This letter to the editor that appeared in Wednesday’s Albuquerque Journal is so interesting, I’m just going to reproduce it in full here.
The letter, from Journal reader Terry Goldman of Los Alamos, ran under the headline “Energy Claim Doesn’t Add Up:”

Marita K. Noon either made a serious writing error in her column, “Target Redundant Costs First to Trim State Budget,” (subscription required)  or else she needs a substantive remedial course in elementary mathematics.
She quotes Oil Conservation Director Mark Fesmire as “sputtering” that “… the OCD annual budget was only about 4 percent of the state’s budget problems (emphasis added).” Earlier in the column, however, she elevated this amount to 4 percent of the state’s entire budget, claiming that eliminating the duplication represented by the OCD would reduce the need to cut the state budget by 10 percent to a cut of only 6 percent. If the quote of Fesmire is accurate, the savings amount to 4 percent of 10 percent, otherwise known as 0.4% of the total state budget.
While this is not to be ignored, and while we are all undoubtedly sympathetic to eliminating duplication in government (although I don’t favor dumping state costs on counties) and while it is clear that her organization (Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy) has much to gain by eliminating state oversight of oil and gas regulation in favor of more easily manipulated local governments, Noon does neither her organization nor her argument any good with what is either a blatant misrepresentation of the facts or an astounding display of mathematical ignorance.
On the contrary, she leaves the impression that none of her or CARE’s arguments should be considered accurate or trustworthy, let alone viewed as having been considered carefully and without bias.
TERRY GOLDMAN
Los Alamos

Hmm. That’s not the first time Noon, an oil and gas industry booster who the Journal features regularly as a guest columnist on its editorial page, has been shot down for making factual errors. We’ve written about it here and here.

Differences of opinion are one thing – but out and out errors made by a writer are another.

When is the Journal going to get the message?

His Obit Should Say “Bad Ass”

(Warning: This post contains nothing about the Albuquerque Journal. But read it anyway…it’s a about a guy who practiced journalism like it should be done!)

By Tracy Dingmann

The list of accomplishments in Jack Nelson’s obit is long, but it left out one thing: Bad Ass.

Because Nelson, who died today at the age of 80 of pancreatic cancer, fearlessly used his own brand of hard-nosed journalism to expose wrongdoing wherever he found it – whether in government or within society as a whole.

“Jack was a reporter’s reporter,” Los Angeles Times columnist Doyle McManus told the Associated Press today. “He maintained that the main thing people want from newspapers is facts — facts they didn’t know before, and preferably facts that somebody didn’t want them to know. Jack was tolerant of opinion writers; he respected analysis writers, and he even admired one or two feature writers. But he believed the only good reason to be a reporter was to reveal hidden facts and bring them to light.”

As a young reporter, the Alabama native won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1960 for a series of articles on Georgia’s Milledgeville Central State Hospital for the Mentally Ill, in which he exposed a stomach-turning collection of abuses, including doctors who conducted experiments on patients and nurses who were allowed to perform major surgery.

In 1965, Nelson was recruited from the Atlanta Constitution to the Los Angeles Times, where he was put in charge of the paper’s coverage of the Civil Rights Movement.

Under Nelson’s leadership, the paper exposed some of the darkest chapters of the struggle, including in-depth reports on “Bloody Sunday,” in Selma, Ala., where state lawmen clubbed and tear-gassed 600 civil rights marchers en-route to Montgomery. Nelson also spearheaded coverage of the massacre of black students at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, S.C.

Nelson’s coverage challenged the notion that a reporter should remain “objective” in the face of an overwhelming wrong.

“A reporter likes to pride himself on being as objective as he can and, you know, tell them both sides of the story,” Nelson said in an interview in 2004. “Well, there’s hardly two sides to a story of a man being denied the basic right to vote. There’s no two sides to a story of a lynching. A lynching is a lynching.”

Nelson’s truth-telling got under the skin of Alabama Gov. George Wallace, and later, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who tried (unsuccessfully)  to destroy him personally.

During the Watergate era, Nelson uncovered parts of the scandal that were not broached by the more famous Woodward and Bernstein team at the Washington Post.

Nelson continued to uncover corruption well into the 1990’s. All in all, he spent 35 years with the Los Angeles Times, retiring in 2000 at age 71.

With his investigative skills and his personal courage and conviction, Jack Nelson was the best kind of journalist – one we need more of.

We lost a good one today.

Journal Ignores Education Poll

By Tracy Dingmann

Whether or not to cut education to help the state make up a $650 million shortfall is a key question in the debate going on at the Capitol today.

Educators implored legislators to refrain from cutting the state’s already underfunded educational system during a press conference yesterday at the Roundhouse. The press conference was sponsored by New Mexico Education Partners, a statewide coalition that includes AFT-New Mexico, NEA-New Mexico, the New Mexico PTA, the New Mexico School Boards Association, and the New Mexico Coalition of School Administrators.

To bolster their claim that cutting education runs counter to the will of the people of New Mexico, the educators presented a study done on Oct. 13-15 by the respected Albuquerque firm Research & Polling, Inc.The study showed 81 percent of voters believe legislators should balance the budget without cutting public school funding. It also showed strong support among New Mexicans for specific ways to raise taxes to help pay for schools. Specifically, the poll shows 70 percent of New Mexicans support raising taxes on tobacco and alcohol, and 61 percent support combined reporting, which would equalize tax rates between in-state and out of state corporations. It also shows that 49 percent of New Mexicans support rolling back tax breaks for the wealthiest New Mexicans.

The poll seems to contradict the popular argument that all New Mexicans oppose paying more taxes for any reason. When it comes to education, the survey showed, New Mexicans are apparently willing to pony up.

Several online news outlets, including the New Mexico Independent and our sister site, ClearlyNewMexico.com mentioned the Research & Polling survey by name and reported the findings.

But the Albuquerque Journal did not mention the poll by name or report any of the findings in today’s coverage of the press conference and of the crucial education funding issue as a whole.

From the Journal story:

“Education union members held a press conference to claim that most New Mexicans favor plugging the budget gap without cutting education spending.”

The Santa Fe New Mexican mentioned the poll only briefly.

In an email sent out this morning by AFT-NM, union president Christine Trujillo asked why neither newspaper covered the poll in depth.

According to the email, the Journal told the teachers union that the Journal has a policy of not printing someone else’s poll.

Research & Polling is owned by a subsidiary of the Journal and the Journal frequently commissions the firm to conduct polls on issues it deems important to its readers –including health care, attitudes on public education and, most recently, how people planned to vote in the city’s mayoral election.

Oftentimes Journal-commissioned Research & and Polling Inc. polls will dominate the Journal’s front pages for days at a time. The polls are always followed by news stories and editorials touting the finding of the polls.

In fact, a Research & Polling survey commissioned by the Journal last month asked respondents whether they would favor raising taxes or cutting spending by existing state agencies to close the state budget gap. Funding for education makes up a large portion of the state’s budget.

The poll, which did not specify what kind of taxes would be raised, showed most people supported making cuts.

That poll made it to the Journal’s front page.

But apparently, when the Journal’s own polling company does a poll for someone else, it is not worth mentioning. What an odd policy!

And it is a policy the paper only follows sporadically. On Aug. 20, the Journal ran a story called “Quarter of New Mexicans Lack Health Insurance,” by staff writer Olivier Uyttebrouck, which was built entirely around a Gallup poll.

I guess Gallup polls don’t count.

If you’d like to read the entire Research & Polling survey, called “Public Education Survey 2009,” it should be available later today at the teacher’s union site.