Check out features of new eEdition

Those of you who are diligent cover-to-cover readers of The Enterprise might be rolling your eyes in exasperation as this column launches into the wonders of the newspaper’s new eEdition, but please stick with me. There are many interesting things to share about this innovation.

If you’ve missed earlier stories, an eEdition is an exact copy of the daily newspaper pages in an electronic format. It is NOT reading the newspaper on our Web page – they are two separate products with different reader features and opportunities.

It’s also deliverable to a variety of electronic devices – home computer, cell phone, smart phone, eBook, Kindle2 or Sony Reader – making it convenient, portable and the ultimate green experience for those concerned about the environment.
Other reader friendly features include:

-- Early arrival. The eEdition is available several hours before the print edition lands in your yard.
-- The ability for readers to e-mail stories or advertisements from the eEdition.
-- The capability to translate the newspaper into Spanish – or one of 10 other languages.
-- Options to display the newspaper in numerous ways, including one that shows all the pages in thumbnail format for quick scanning
-- A function that will allow your computer to actually read the stories aloud to you – think multi-tasking: you can listen to newspaper-quality news while exercising or getting ready for work in the morning
-- The ability to print pages of the Enterprise with a special function for crossword puzzle fans.
-- An archive of issues, enabling readers to view newspaper pages at their leisure.

So if your college student just moved to Massachusetts – or Austin – and wants to keep up with the news back home, this is a great solution. If Aunt Mildred just moved to Florida to be near her children, she can still read her Enterprise. Or if you live in a rural community where daily delivery isn’t an option, you no longer have to depend on the mailman to deliver your newspaper several days late.

Electronic delivery is $8.95 per month. Current print subscribers who want to add an eEdition subscription receive a discounted rate of $4.25 per month.

To check out the features of the new service via a demonstration, go to:
this link to check it out.

If you decide you’re ready to commit to this new era of journalism, you can click the eEdition button at the top right of the BeaumontEnterprise.com homepage or simply go to: this link to subscribe

or call 1-800-891-3638.

*****

Journalists aren’t exactly adrenaline junkies, but a major news event does get reporters and editors working in full action mode. Such was the case last Tuesday afternoon when our newsroom got word of a tornado touching down off Dowlen Road.

Multiple reporters and photographers headed to the scene, calling in stories that immediately were posted to the BeaumontEnterprise.com Web site.

We were proud of the job we did getting the news to our readers and heard positive feedback from many of them.

Among the interesting events related to the news-making tornado was the number of phone calls that came into the newsroom. Numerous radio stations, television stations and other media outside of Beaumont called our newsroom looking for details about the twister and related damage.

Initially, it struck as a bit odd – why wouldn’t they call the local electronic media, we wondered? Ultimately, we were gratified that people still recognize newspapers as the best source for the best information.

Readers should recognize advertising

As you open your newspaper this morning you might be warily scanning the weather map for hurricane news, checking for stories of interest or studying the advertisements for back-to-school bargains.

According to a survey conducted by MORI Research, almost six out of 10 adults (59 percent) use newspaper advertisements “to help plan shopping or make purchase decisions.” The preliminary report was released by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).

The telephone and Internet survey of more than 3,000 adults indicated that 73 percent of adults regularly or occasionally read newspaper inserts and 82 percent “have been spurred to action by a newspaper insert in the past month.”

Specifics include the information that, of the survey respondents who “took action” as a result of a newspaper ad: 61 percent clipped a coupon; 50 percent bought something; and 27 percent tried something for the first time.

That said, let me also throw in a disclaimer: The survey was sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America. That’s not to say the results aren’t valid, but just that, as a newspaper, we might quote such survey results concerning another industry and we would always include any survey sponsorship information — as well as the method and size of the sampling.

The fact that the survey included Internet responses, in my opinion, gives it more validity, because it indicates that the company did more than ask newspaper readers about their opinions concerning newspaper advertising. But it is my job to give you complete information and let you form your own opinion.

In similar news, A New York Times article last week reported that two of the National Advertising Review Council’s investigative units are set to announce recommendations calling for clear disclosure of sponsorships on blog sites or paid product reviews.

For example, many prominent Web sites invite readers to click on a link about a new product, a bargain or a coupon and read about a great product that is featured. What readers might not realize is that the product comments or discounts are simply part of a paid advertising program.

“It’s something everyone in the consumer protection area is newly focused on,” the article quoted C. Lee Peeler, the chief executive of the National Advertising Review Council as saying. “One of the issues of advertising in the new media is, is it clear that it’s paid-for advertising, or does it look like something else?”

In addition to unlabeled advertising on Web sites or blogs, there is the increasingly pervasive and more troubling use of paid reviewers, planted positive comments about products and bloggers whose opinions are for sale to the highest bidder. It makes the world of on-line advertising even more confusing for consumers.

That’s why, in newspapers, those pages are labeled as advertisements. Sometimes full page ads in The Enterprise, or in our Sunday Parade magazine, are designed by advertisers to look like news articles, but alert readers will note that, usually, prominently at the top of the ad, the words “paid advertisement” or “advertisement” will appear.

The Enterprise and other reputable papers insist on that distinction and also generally select a type font that is dedicated to news coverage and not available for use in advertisements.

This column always urges readers to be wary of the source of their information before they take its credibility for granted. That caution extends beyond the news that consumers read to include where they get their advertising.

Although we acknowledge that we sometimes fail, we continue to strive to produce a fair and accurate product for our customers. We want our readers to know the difference between facts and advertising so they can make informed decisions about the products they choose to purchase.

Jailed journalists shine light on profession

August 11, 2009

In the past week, the public has had a fairly substantial exposure to a story involving journalists in peril.

Journalists Euna Lee, 36, and Laura Ling, 32, who were working for a San Francisco-based media outlet, were near North Korea’s border with China when they were seized March 17 by North Korean authorities, according to a Washington Post story.

They later were subjected to a five-day closed trial where they were convicted of “grave crimes” against that country and sentenced to 12 years hard labor. There was no appeal process available.

The journalists were on a mission to explore Korea’s human rights record and specifically to research a story about the trafficking of North Korean women to China, according to the story.

But anyone who hasn’t had their head in the sand is probably well-aware of that story. Other stories, too, have drawn substantial attention. Like the serious injury of ABC newsman Bob Woodruff in 2006.

What you might not be aware of is that at least 29 journalists around the world have died – this year, trying to do their jobs. Not one was in the United States, which is probably a good excuse for our ignorance, though it’s not a very good reason.

Around the world, in Africa, the Middle East, South America and other places, journalists face danger every day trying to make people aware of what is going on in those countries.

An organization called the Newseum – a newspaper museum in Washington, D.C., lists those lost to the efforts. The Web site’s complete list actually contains almost 2,000 names of journalist who were killed trying to do their jobs.

So what on earth does that have to do with The Beaumont Enterprise? Not much. Though we occasionally have a reporter or photographer who gets a scratch or scrape on the job, we’re not exactly doing our jobs in a war zone.

But what our reporters do, can be mentally, if not physically, stressful.

A Los Angeles Times article by James Rainey puts it this way: “Sure, journalists can be pushy louts, too hurried or self-important to worry who gets in their way . . . movies and pop culture tend to fixate on the reporter as loud, conniving or politically sold-out . . . Reporters understand that they live in a rough and tumble business and that they can’t always make friends. Still, it can be dispiriting to watch the relentless caricature of media running amok.”

As we cautiously move into what seasoned Southeast Texans recognize as the most threatening portion of the hurricane season without even one named storm yet, images and experiences of Hurricanes Rita and Ike (and Humberto and Gustav) replay in our minds.

People who experienced the loss of loved ones, flooded homes, lifetimes of possessions simply . . . gone, struggled greatly. So did those who, day after day, family after family, wrote the stories and took the photographs while those victims cleaned up and cried. Some of those journalists experienced personal losses as well, but they did their jobs.

There are few long-time journalists who haven’t seen at least one dead body – not dressed nicely for funeral visitation, but pulled from a river, or a car, or a burning home. Virtually every reporter has had to interview a family who has lost a loved one.

During those times we try to maintain a professional distance, but when we close our eyes at night, we’re still human and we still see those images and feel the pain of those experiences.

We aren’t heroes like those in the military, like police officers or firefighters, and we certainly don’t expect their level of respect and admiration. But we do what we do every day for the same reason – because we think it is important.

We aren’t out to change the world. We just want to do our job, which includes trying to tell the stories of the people and events in our tiny part of that world.

Intent is documentation, not defamation

August 4, 2009

As journalists and human beings we would never purposely go out of our way to hurt someone. Sometimes, however, bad things happen in the course of us trying to do our job.

We don’t actually want your children to find out you’ve remarried by reading your name in a list of marriage licenses in the newspaper. We don’t actually want your boss to find out you filed for bankruptcy – or got indicted – from The Enterprise.

It’s not our intention to destroy your family, your business or your social standing when we report the news.

Nonetheless, it is our responsibility to report news events, including marriages, bankruptcies and indictments.

One of the reasons we feel comfortable in reporting facts that people might otherwise prefer to keep private is that we handle publication of the contents of all those public records in the same way. If your name is on the list, it’s going to be published in our newspaper.

We don’t necessarily print every indictment because we have neither the time nor space to follow up on the resolution of each of those court actions.

As professionals, we have to make decisions about the level of public interest in determining which cases to report on from crime to arrest to indictment and court action.

Actually, reporting on most events related to criminal activity generally is pretty cut-and-dried.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty and the right to a fair trial. It only means that in situations where there are multiple witnesses or even video evidence, we’re likely to be somewhat cynical.

Those we are less cynical about are the innocent victims of crimes. That doesn’t involve the children whose father died or the family whose home burned. We are aware that sometimes criminal activity has peripheral damage.

When we write about the hotel, club, business or neighborhood where something criminal happened, we recognize that might affect our readers’ perceptions of that location.

Newspapers are, among other things, the document of record. They provide, both theoretically and frequently realistically, the first draft of history of any event. When we leave out information, we blur the facts in reporting an event.

In writing this column, I had planned to use the 1988 shooting death of a Beaumont Police officer as an example. By my recollection, he was killed at the Ramada Inn. It doesn’t matter exactly where that was because there have been several Ramada Inns in Beaumont since 1988 and, possibly because of that, the phone book no longer lists a Ramada Inn in the city. The location where I believe the shooting occurred still exists, but it has a different name.

I researched the story to verify my recollections and found one reference to a motel with a different name, which I believe to be incorrect, and stacks of old files that simply said the officer was killed “in a Beaumont motel.”

So, for those who would prefer that we skip that detail in reporting a criminal activity, we aren’t trying to be insensitive to your concerns. We simply want to do our job, which is to accurately, and completely, report events.

*****

Since this column concerns possible criticism of the newspaper for taking on responsibility for complete reporting, this quote seemed one worth sharing, and pondering:

“In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, The New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.”

Hugo L Black, Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court,
On the publication of the Pentagon Papers, 1971