MMMM # 439 --- The NY Times Paywall at Three

    

     The three year anniversary of The New York Times pay wall is Friday. 
     The most recent online story (one NOT behind a pay-wall) that I could find was in The Columbia Journalism Review, last Fall. It reported slowing, but still significant revenue from paying online readers. It concludes the paper would be a very deep financial hole without that revenue.
     Even more insightful was another Fall of 2013 article, in the Neiman Journalism Lab site. It details a new wave of Times pay projects that will be going online in the next few months, including a food-oriented site and an opinion site, which the Nieman folks believe will be the toughest sell: 

"There is so much free opinion on the web, some of it actually good..." 

 ###

     The NBC and CBS Television affiliates in Birmingham, Alabama, may soon be under the same ownership. 
     The parent companies of WAIT and WVTM have agreed to merge in a $1.8 Billion deal. FCC regulations allow no more than two TV stations under the same owners in the same markets, so they could operate the two together, if...if their combined audiences do not surpass an FCC maximum audience percentage.

      Speaking of WAIT, I worked there before my departure from Birmingham in 1998.
     One of my co-workers there was fond of asking--OK, demanding--"says who?" about statements of supposed fact in stories. It seems like an obvious question, but it helps eliminate some sloppy writing.
     I thought of him (Hi Don!) as I read a sentence in an al.com story over the weekend:

A city of Detroit employee discovered something that will haunt the unnamed person for the rest of their life.

     Says who?
     There's no indication of any haunting in the story, much less a lifelong haunting, and although it may be true, I suspect it is more of the writer's projection of her own emotional reaction.
     Sometimes reporters will interview three or four people at an event and project that tiny sampling of comment onto the much larger universe:
     "Neighbors were  horrified" and "The Auburn student body is unhappy with the change.."...or "City residents have had enough of crime! 
     Says who?

     And I attended the Alabama Broadcaster's Association banquet in Birmingham Saturday and was pleased to see Paul Peterson and his wife...Paul and I worked together at WERC back in the day..he's still in radio in Gadsden, at Lite 96.9 WRSA, which won an ABBY award for a breast-cancer public service promotion they aired.]


[ALSO: If you missed last night's 60-Minutes, the segment on the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing included comments from investigators about the damage done by CNN and a New York Newspaper. Both showed pictures of people who were not the bombing suspects.]

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of TimLennox.com]