This just in...

Well, you may have noticed that the Mayans were wrong.  There was no apocalypse and we're all still here, careening toward 2013.  I am sorry I didn't blog for a while there but, in the absence of an apocalypse, I thought I had best do my Christmas shopping.

I hope you all had a wonderful break: a magical Christmas or a very restful Tuesday.  No matter how you spent yesterday, or even the day before that, you might have missed this little gem of a news story that I saw sneak through the wires on Christmas eve.  In fact, it's a news article about the news.  And how you may, or may not, be getting that news from your local newspaper.

The Chicago Tribune, and 6 other sister papers, have all decided to drop the services of the Associate Press in favor of Reuters America.  One of the 6 sister papers impacted is my own local Hartford Courant.  This has me befuddled.  I grew up understanding that the little "AP" stamp on a story was a kind of seal of approval.  This meant that the article that was before me had been tested somehow.  What happens now?

The AP has been around since 1846 and is an American news agency.  You can read more about it here.  It is cooperatively owned, and the contributing newspapers, tv and radio stations write stories and use content that is created by the staff journalist.  In exchange for either membership or a pay-fee service, all of the news items generated can be published and re-published.  This, for years, was how local papers got along without a foreign correspondent, or a dedicated sports desk.  Using AP services meant that you had the resources of many newspapers at your disposal.  It was a kind of co-op, for news and now The Tribune has decided to opt-out.

I don't mean to sound like I am naive; I understand that this is largely a financial decision.  This move, according to Feder in the article above, will likely save the Tribune about $5 million dollars a year.   Still, would this be worth the savings in the end?  The 37-year veteran of print newspapers and former editor of North Carolina's News & Record, John L. Robinson says that there's a right reason and a wrong reason to make a change like this.  He says that if it's just the money, it's the wrong reason.  Papers need services like the AP to fill the pages.  Plain and simple.  It is very likely impossible or further cost prohibitive to hire the local reporters needed to mind the gap.  There will still have to be some outsourcing.

The Tribune and, locally, the Courant will be looking to Reuters to "fill the pages."  Reuters is a much newer name in the game than the Associated Press.  Reuters is an international company, which really didn't make it to the scene until about 2008.  In fact, some of the birth of the Reuters brand came at the hands (and careful contract construction) of the people over at the Tribune parent company.  Back in 2010, Newsonomics posted an article about Reuters move into the American market.  Here's a snippet of what that deal looked like.

What is Reuters America, and what is it offering Tribune, and now others, as it aims to benefit from newspapers’ occasional family squabbles with AP? The new product is plainly aimed to be a replacement for AP.  The new news service combines lots of elements to try to do that:

• Reuters says it is committing to staffing 103 U.S. cities, though at unspecified levels. The staffing will be a mix of full-timers and stringers. The offices will share daily budgets with Tribune (and future customers), and offers to do on-demand stories, maybe as many as two to three a day, as requested by clients.
• A beefed-up sports offering, intended to shore up a long-time Reuters deficiency in the U.S. market. Cricket and rugby coverage just doesn’t cut it here, so Reuters has partnered with Sports Direct, the Sports Xchange and SB Nation to pump up coverage.
• It’s adding The Wrap News for more entertainment content.
• It’s partnering with Pro-Am Examiner.com, harvesting the work of those contributors.

Notice the last three bullets.  Reuters is pulling from Sports Direct, The Wrap News and Pro-Am Examiner.  Peter Drucker's "Do what you do best, and outsource the rest" is alive at Reuters, according to Newsomomics.  It's outsourced news that's been outsourced, all of it getting further and further away from the little local paper.

I understand also that all of this outsourcing for the news isn't new, and it is likely another symptom of a chronic illness from which print media seems to be suffering.  Sarah Lacy, over at Pandodaily, suggests that this is just another milestone in the slow death of print media.  She goes on to say that being "the paper," the publication of record for an area and the news source, has always been a key requirement for papers like the Courant to thrive.  

Are local papers just giving up on that? In an Internet-connected world, maybe they should. As I noted above, the idea that people know nothing that happened in the previous 24 hours until a plastic-wrapped dead tree lands on their porch is silly. On the other hand, if that’s not the role of a local paper, what is the role of a local paper? Are they tacitly admitting to advertisers and readers that there isn’t one?

Ouch.

Maybe there's no such thing as local news anymore.

Well, that's enough Doomsday for one day.  I'm starting to miss the Mayans.

Russell Brand and the WBC

This video has gone viral.  If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it.  Well, most of it.  You'll get enough of the right ideas by the 7 minute mark.

The Westboro Baptist Church had planned to protest the funerals of several of the victims of 12/14/12.  The army of volunteers that offered to stand between them and those who were mourning the dead was incredible.  In the end, or at least so far, no one has come to Connecticut.  Let's hope it stays that way.

12/14/12

Just a date.  That's all I could think about for a long while after the horror of the events at Newtown, CT this past week.

4/20/99

Do you know that one?  That's the date for the shootings at Columbine.  My nephew was 8 years old and attending school in Littleton, CO.  I remember the guilty sigh of relief when I realized it was the high school that had been under siege, and not the elementary school.

But this was not my family; not this time.

4/16/07

Virginia Tech.  I can't remember how to pronounce his name, but I remember that there was a host of photos, posed shots of this young man assailant and his manifesto, all spread throughout the CNN web page.  For days, there was mourning and trying to understand what parts were connected.

I was teaching at my University and developed a plan for what I would do if someone started shooting in my building, while I was teaching.  The doors lock when they are closed.  The window on the door is shatterproof.  If everyone clustered in the middle of the room, there would be no line-to-sight.  We could shut the lights off and someone would walk right past.

But this was not my school; not this time.  And there is something reassuring about having a plan. 

Most people would have to Google those dates.  I did not.  Both of those dates are burned into my brain.  I was changed by the events of those days.  12/14/12 will be the next date to change me.  

Almost immediately, the gun control debate began.  And the debate about how well we support our mentally ill.  Violent games?  What about the "fact that we've removed God from school?"  Forgiving (briefly), Huckabee's baseline insanity, and the fact that he walked it back a bit, we're all grasping for answers.  How did this happen?  How much could we do to make it never happen again?  My heart tells me it is all of these things more than it is any one of them, with the possible exception of Huckabee's weird diatribe.   

What happened on 12/14/12 was a very special recipe designed to produce disaster.  Like most recipes that you've experienced, the big ingredients are easy to pick out: the dominant flavors.  Behind them, simpler and subtle flavors that are harder to identify.  Could that be a hint of nutmeg, you ask; you're not completely sure.  What could have possibly been the secret ingredient that set a master plan into motion?  We will never know all of the components of this recipe beyond just the big flavors that we can suss out for ourselves.  What we are always left with, after tragedies such as this, is the list of what-ifs, some half theory about what comes next, and a date that we must never forget.

Christie On "Harsh vs. Honest"

New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, was on the Daily Show last week.  If you head out to the Daily Show's web page, you will find the extended interview.  This is a little bit beautiful.  Even Jon Stewart can't help but to laugh.  Say way you will about Christie, and I will pause while you do that.



Done?

Ok, now: Christie's a funny guy who feels really real.  And Really Real is something that the Romney/Ryan ticket couldn't do.  This little bit here shows someone that, I believe, is very charismatic, and would be a welcome addition to the 2016 Presidential ticket.  The other favorites from the GOP can't do what he does.  Think about it:  when was the last time Paul Ryan made you laugh?  I mean, not "at" but "with?"  Marco Rubio?  I can't remember what that guy looks like when I am looking right at him.  Christie, you don't forget.  He's doing something a little more authentic.  Notice near the 8:45 mark, Jon says "You keep that up and, I think, you and Hillary are going to have a hell of a battle in 2016."  He goes on to say that the people are starved for this kind of honest. 

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Christie, himself, made the "starved" joke about his own weight.  I have to admit, I like the guy.  Honest. 

Epilogue, sort of.

Tonight was the last class of the Media in the 2012 Election.  That class was what brought me here, to blogging.  I have some feelings around the idea of this class ending.  I will miss our Monday nights very much.

I have made a very important decision, however.  I am gonna keep blogging.

The class has ended, but I don't want this to be the end of Cache o' the Day.  We're too cute to quit, amiright?  Anyway.  If you like this blog, the good news is your stuck with me.  If you don't like this blog, the good news is... you're stuck with me and maybe I will grow on you.  Maybe not.  Either way, my plan is to continue to write about where my browsing leads me.  There will be some politics, some computer/technical stuff, some media stuff, and a bit of literature stuff for good measure.  Who knows?  

Are you game?

Playing with Your News, Part Deux

This one is about the fiscal cliff.  Fun!  Except that it's about your taxes, your family and your future.  But other than that....

Thanks, Washington Post.

"The data's the thing/Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king"

Alright.  That's not quite what Shakespeare said.  In Hamlet, Shakespeare's broken prince attempts to gain a reaction from his regicidal uncle by showing the new king scenes in a play that are familiar enough to his ghost father's story of murder.  If he can get a reaction, Hamlet believes he will know what path to take.

It's not quite the same as murder, but there are more than a few databases out there prepared to create and manage scenarios of voter outcome.  Tweaking and analyzing that data can generate enough information to get a reaction out of the best of us.  The goal: how can the Obama campaign change your mind and earn your vote.

If you haven't already done so, you should read Time Magazine's article Obama Wins: How Chicago's Data-Driven Campaign Triumphed.  Warning: it could hurt your head.  In the Time's piece, Michael Scherer writes about the scientists and data people that were hired by President Obama's campaign to be the inside scoop to win the election.  This team was hired and assembled by Jim Messina, and according to Scherer:  "He hired an analytics department five times as large as that of the 2008 operation, with an official “chief scientist” for the Chicago headquarters named Rayid Ghani, who in a previous life crunched huge data sets to, among other things, maximize the efficiency of supermarket sales promotions."

It would seem that what we understand about supermarket sales promotions does, in fact, translate to the world of politics.  Because of research and analysis, the Obama campaign was able to raise over $1 billion.  The two most useful tools to meet that goal were the targeted emails and a program called "Quick Donate."  Quick Donate made it possible for a donor to give again, via text or online, without having to re-enter credit card information.  The people who participated in that program gave about 4 times as much as other donors.

According to Scherer, the data told the "scientists" that George Clooney and Sarah Jessica Parker were the key figures on each coast that could be manipulated as fundraising tools.  Women of a certain demographic would be willing to donate in exchange for a dinner with Clooney (west coast) or Parker (east coast).  The data reveled that buying advertising during shows like The Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy would target the precise demographic for the needs of the campaign.

Apart from creating donors, another key point of movement for a campaign is "getting out the vote."  Here the data sets were once again ready to rescue the day.  Donors and volunteers who used Facebook were asked to target friends who were voters in swing states.  "In the final weeks of the campaign, people who had downloaded an app were sent messages with pictures of their friends in swing states. They were told to click a button to automatically urge those targeted voters to take certain actions, such as registering to vote, voting early or getting to the polls." 

Sasha Issenberg has been talking about the Obama campaign and data for a long while.   In a series of articles for Slate called "The Victory Lab" (and a book of the same name), Issenberg warns that this data wasn't just used to prompt new voters through Facebook.  

With an eager pool of academic collaborators in political science, behavioral psychology, and economics linking up with curious political operatives and hacks, the left has birthed an unexpected subculture. It now contains a full-fledged electioneering intelligentsia, focused on integrating large-scale survey research with randomized experimental methods to isolate particular populations that can be moved by political contact.

All of this information is, of course, designed to teach the campaigns a little bit about who can be persuaded.  In fact, persuasion is the word of the hour for the 2012 election.  In ProPublica's article, we learn about persuasion scores.  These scores allowed the campaign to to focus their efforts on people who may actually change their minds.  

While this technique is not new, it could be argued that since the Obama team mastered it, it may have been the tipping point for them to win the election.  Romney's campaign never fully caught up to the Obama campaign, in terms of technology.  Romney didn't have the staff or the tools in place fast enough to generate the response needed to catch up to the technology game of his opponent.  The result?  A different kind of Shakespearian tragedy for that camp.