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July/August 2006

The advertisers' "jewel box" is the audiences' plain ol' advertising. That's how The New York Times reported the rival Wall Street Journal's announcement that it will carry front-page advertising starting pretty soon – "a move that could bring in tens of millions of dollars in advertising revenue each year." The Times reported that front-page ads are not unusual in the United Kingdom and that the Journal already runs front-pages ads in some individual sections. But it quoted the Poynter Institute's Bob Steele: "As a traditionalist, I'm not thrilled by the idea." Early speculation is that each of the ads could pull in $75,000 to "the low six figures."

Still at The Wall Street Journal or, rather at Dow Jones, home of the flagship newspaper: The company is undertaking a reassessment of how it delivers news across its print and online outlets. Facing "fundamental challenges" common also to other newspapers, the company is looking into what it can do about continued losses of readers – and advertisers (see above) – to online outlets. For media geeks, this one will be worth following closely.

Is this still news at this point? U.S. newspaper revenue reports for the second quarter were "sluggish ... discouraging." Rising newsprint costs, coupled with "flat or falling circulation and sluggish advertising growth" are to blame, The New York Times reported. A well known media analyst, John Morton, told the Times he thinks newsprint price increases "will be much more modest" next year than this. A ray of light amidst the lengthening shadows.

This too from the Times: Marketers are seeing product placement in movies and on TV shows as an increasingly "fairly standard practice" and they may see a crack in the wall when it comes to magazine and newspaper articles and TV and radio news programs. Nearly half of 266 marketing execs surveyed by PR Week magazine and Manning Selvage & Lee, a PR firm, said they had paid for broadcast or editorial placement. About half of those said they have not done so "would consider doing so in the future."

"I don't think it's as blatant as putting cash in an editor's hand," Mark Hass of the PR firm told the Times. "The issue is much more subtle than that and more nefarious as a result." He told the paper the survey results suggest that "an ethical issue that needs to be discussed, that there needs to be education around, so that the marketing industry develops more respect for the separation between editorial and advertising."

Higher carbon dioxide levels are "making the world's oceans more acidic," Juliet Eilperin wrote in The Washington Post July 5, perhaps another small sign that the issue of increased ocean acidity is gaining its legs among the media. "Although scientists and some politicians have just begun to focus on the question of ocean acidification, they describe it as one of the most pressing environmental issues facing Earth ... 'dramatically altering ocean chemistry and threatening corals and other marine organisms that secrete skeletal structures,'" Eilperin reported, taking the quote from a National Center for Atmospheric Research/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration press release. The new pollutant of the month? Could be ... but chances are the reading public will be seeing a lot more on this one in coming years.

If those folks at the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) membership recruitment office are anything like their counterparts at AARP (the acronym-only group formerly known as the American Association for Retired Persons), they must be all over New York Times columnist and book author Thomas Friedman!

The omnipresent Friedman has taken to green issues like the proverbial fly to ... well, you get the picture. On June 16, his "Seeds for a Geo-Green Party" column laid out a roadmap for a new third political party platform: "The Geo-Green party (he even upper-cased the name!) could claim that it has a plan for shoring up America's energy security, environmental security, economic security and Social Security with one move." That move, in Friedman's imagination, is a $1 per gallon "Patriot Tax" that would, among other things, ensure promising energy alternatives to oil "and thereby reduce both our dependence on crude and our emissions of greenhouse gases."

Twelve days later, Friedman was back with a "Cry of the Wild" column on threats facing the declining Amazonian rain forest. "Do-gooders will not stop these forces. It requires a grand strategy," Friedman wrote, quoting a Conservation International traveling companion as calling for "a green infrastructure ... that will create a powerful green economic counterweight to the global economic forces driving deforestation." (Friedman disclosed that his wife is on C.I.'s board.)

And again two days later – "Red China or Green?" With Chinese companies "on a global campaign to amass oil, gas, farms, and mining concessions" worldwide, he wrote, "one of the biggest environmental challenges in the world today is how to turn 'Red China' into 'Green China' – not just at home, but abroad."

He called for "a broad dialogue with China now – by governments, environmental groups, companies – on how to make its global footprint green."

C'mon, Tom. Join SEJ!

Maybe filmmakers – or at least those with a camcorder – are picking up the slack left by mainstream media unable or unwilling to do their jobs? That's a fair inference from a New York Times June 19 article, "Fitfully Blending Papers and TV."

"Documentaries used to explore issues, but there has been an extraordinary explosion of political advocacy," HBO documentary films president Sheila Nevins told columnist David Carr. "I don't think the evening news is doing a good job of expressing the confusion about the state of the world, and this is a soapbox that a lot of people are turning to." The article pointed to examples such as former Veep Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," about global warming. "Mainstream media, especially The New York Times, has failed to cast a skeptical eye on those in power," Carr quoted Michael Moore, of Fahrenheit 911 fame or infamy, as saying. "If journalism isn't doing the job and fiction isn't doing the job, nonfiction has stepped in with compelling characters, good stories, and important films," Moore added.

"The current impulse to fight back by picking up a camera is generally considered a liberal reflex – there are very few politically conservative documentarians," the Times reported.

The reporters administered a dose of caution: It's not clear whether such documentaries will have any "real-world effect," they wrote. Even those, like Gore's, breaking through to wide release are "up against the tyranny of mass consumption .... the choir of the converted may line up for the latest cause, but most people who clog the multiplex are not going to be talking about global warming as they drive away."