The Future Of Media

A WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY
I was fortunate to be included in a panel discussion Thursday afternoon with the current class of Leadership Tomorrow during which the current condition and future of media was discussed.  I was part of a panel, moderated by former Daily Pilot Publisher Tom Johnson, which included Daily Pilot Editor John Canalis and dynamic restaurant Public Relations representative Mona Shah-Anderson.  Unfortunately, a representative from the Orange County Register was unable to attend.

SOME FAMILIAR FACES
For an hour we responded to questions posed to us by Johnson and members of the class, which included some familiar faces.  Dane Bora and Leigh Chalkley of the City of Costa Mesa were in the group, as was Andrew Smith - a member of the Costa Mesa Charter Committee.  Click on that link above and you can see the full roster of this year's class.

 BUSINESS USING MEDIA
Shah-Anderson, the highly-acclaimed restaurant strategist, discussed her approach to getting media coverage for her clients - high-end restaurants throughout Orange County.  She, for example, had just returned from a video shoot at Fox News in Los Angeles that morning and was scampering out to another client commitment following our meeting.  The tries to "personalize" the restaurants by focusing on the chefs and their skills.  Plus, she uses all the current social media sources to the maximum to entice people to the restaurants.  I, personally, have been the victim of her skill.  She posts photos of yummy dishes prepared by her client chefs and I immediately feel like Pavlov's dog - salivating to get a taste of the food.  She is married to former Daily Pilot City Editor, Paul Anderson, who now is the presence of the City News Service in Orange County and a REAL newsman.

CONDITION OF LOCAL MEDIA
We discussed the current condition of print media locally - it's on unsteady ground.  The drama around the Register has been widely chronicled, as has the ownership of the Los Angeles Times - parent company of the Daily Pilot.  There are still some great unknowns about those organizations.  The Register, for example, made a huge commitment to growing it's print presence - acquiring the Riverside Press Enterprise and creating brand new newspapers in both Long Beach and Los Angeles.  Those last two efforts were spectacular failures and the financial condition of the entire organization is precarious, at best.  We learned from Canalis that the Pilot is on solid financial footing right now, but that he'd always welcome the chance to hire more reporters and staff to support them.

IT'S NOT JUST A LOCAL PROBLEM
In doing some research for this opportunity I found that, since 2004, 187 newspaper printing facilities have been closed nationwide - a bellwether of the condition of the print product.  Between 2003 and 2013 the advertising revenues for the print media has dropped 49%!  More journalism jobs are available in digital media sources than print sources by far.  And, it's not only newspapers that are suffering.  If you subscribe to, or regularly read ANY magazine these days, you realize that they are rapidly becoming mere shadows of themselves.  Folks just don't subscribe as much - because so much of that information is available online at NO COST.  And thereby lies the problem.

COVERING ALL THE BASES IS A TOUGH JOB
The difficulty of covering every story with a reduced staff was part of the discussion by Canalis.  I opined that, being a huge fan of the Daily Pilot myself, I thought they did a good job of balancing their news coverage.  I suggested one measurement of that success was the fact that they've managed to anger folks on both sides of an issue - each presuming that the editors and writers favored the other's point of view.  It's actually amusing in a sad sort of way.

THE BURDEN OF FACTS WITHOUT OPINION
Johnson prodded me about my aggressive opinion-writing on Costa Mesa issues, which I readily acknowledged.  As a blogger I have much more latitude than any of the "real" news outlets.  They are burdened by the responsibility of providing the facts of issues, clearly and accurately and as quickly as possible.  They also must cover a breadth of issues where I can focus on one specific story at a time.  In my opinion - there's that word again - both the Daily Pilot and the Orange County Register do a good job of presenting the news fairly and accurately.  Yeah, I know some of you disagree with me, but I challenge you to point out one issue where they have NOT done so...

CAULDRON READERSHIP CONTINUES TO GROW
Johnson also asked me to quantify the blog - how many people read it, for example.  Well, I told him there are many ways to quantify it, but purely from a "pageviews" standpoint, we have had well over 2 million page views with the current host platform - more than 500,000 each for the past two years.  The readership, based on all the measurements I have available to me, continues to grow.  Thanks to all of you for that.  That being said, those numbers pale when compared to the pageviews tallied by the Daily Pilot or the Register - which is how it should be.  We simply need a viable, thriving, free press in this country.  Otherwise, how do we know what the heck's going on?

LOCAL COMPARISONS
I will, unashamedly, tell you that the numbers for this blog far outstrip those of two "competing" blogs in this city.  That "kinder, gentler" blog seems to have lost all traction - not unexpected when his unreadable,  pseudo-intellectual bilge has devolved into comparing activists in this city to Muslim terrorists. The much more established blog operated by our racist laureate has lost readership so significantly that it doesn't even show up on many measurement tools.  I guess that's a good sign.  It tells me that folks just got tired of wading through all the manure posted there looking for a pearl of wisdom.   Typically, you'd come away from a session reading that thing and feel like you need a good shower.

DIGITAL IS THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE
The more than two dozen people in the class covered the spectrum age-wise, as you can see from the photo above.  Most of them, in response to Johnson's first question, acknowledged that they do NOT read a newspaper each day.  Several did, but most did not.  Many of the class members get their news from smart phones and/or tablets - which, according to the research I did, is the wave of the future.  Unfortunately, nobody has yet successfully found a way to make money selling the news that way.  That's a problem that simply must be solved.  We cannot let the future of news in this country be blogs like mine or, God Forbid, those other two!  That's completely unacceptable.

FACTS...
Here are some snippets of information extracted from a recent Pew State Of The News Media report from last year.

• News is part of the explosion of social media and mobile devices, which could be a way to reach more people than ever before.
• Half of Facebook users get news there even though they did not go there looking for it.
• Facebook users who get news at the highest rates are the 18-to-29-year-olds.
• The same is true for the growth are of online video.  Half of those who watch some kind of online video watch news videos.  Again, young people constitute the greatest portion of these viewers.
• Despite evidence of news consumption by Facebook users - half of whom report getting news across at least six topic areas - research data finds these consumers to have rather low levels of engagement with news sites.
• Their study found that roughly 5,000 full-time professional jobs at nearly 500 digital news outlets, most of which did not exist a half-dozen years ago.
• Local television remains the primary place American adults turn to for news, and the audience increased for the first time in five years.
• A quarter of the 952 U.S. television stations that air newscasts do not produce their news programs. 

You can read that report in it's entirety HERE.

THANKS FOR THE OPPORTUNITY
Thanks to Tom Johnson, Chairman Joe Stapleton and Vice Chairman Jon Lewis - recently promoted to Deputy Police Chief in Newport Beach - and the Leadership Tomorrow class of 2015 for inviting me to participate.  I hope my input was helpful to them - and I hope they become regular readers here.

Leadership Tomorrow Graduation

SOME GOOD NEWS FOR YOU
Before I forget and this information gets lost in all the political morass next week, here's some very positive news for you to consider.

THE FUTURE IS THEIRS...
Next Wednesday Leadership Tomorrow will celebrate the graduation of their class of 2011 with a reception and at the Back Bay Bistro. The keynote speaker will be Newport Beach icon Evelyn Hart. You can read about the event, and Hart's achievements, HERE. You'll find a handy link on that site with which you can make reservations to attend this event.
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC...
This event is open to the public, the price is reasonable and it should be a wonderful evening. Congratulations to all those in the Class of 2011.

The Visionary Next Door

VISIONARIES MISSING
One of the things that has bugged me about Costa Mesa - my home for more than half my life - has been the lack of vision by it's elected leaders for the past decade or more. With very rare exceptions, no elected leader, or any candidate for elective office for that matter, has stood before an assembled group of voters and articulated a clear vision for our city.

POTHOLES AND POLICE
Yes, some have addressed "problems" with ideas to solve them, but that doesn't meet my definition of "vision". Most candidates for the City Council, for example, stick with the tried and true, "potholes and police" mantra.

SEGERSTROMS
Costa Mesa has visionary people - Henry Segerstrom, for example. His vision for the bean fields in the north part of town has created a retail and arts complex of world renown. His vision has been for his property, appropriately so, and we all should be grateful to him and his family for the good works they've done in and for our city.

WATCH THIS VIDEO
Tuesday, in the OC NOW blog, Daily Pilot reporter Mike Reicher, provided a brief report on a fund raiser that Newport Beach City Council candidate Rush Hill held at his home, and included a 5 minute video clip. Hill will be competing with Ed Reno for the seat being vacated by Walkin' Don Webb. I hope you'll take the time to view that video clip now. As I said, it's short...



WERE YOU IMPRESSED?
OK, are you back? Were you impressed with Hill's delivery of his vision and priorities for Newport Beach? I was. And, as I watched that clip, I couldn't help but think about how sad it is for Costa Mesa that we just don't seem to have folks with the vision and, for lack of another description, "command presence" of a Rush Hill running for public office.

WHO WILL RUN?
Monday was the first day candidates for City Council could take out papers for the election in November. As I write this I have not heard of any candidates for Costa Mesa City Council who have actually taken that step. I understand that Wendy Leece will attempt to retain her seat and young Chris McEvoy will run again this year. I suspect it almost goes without saying that perpetual election loser Jim Righeimer will also run, hoping to snag the seat being vacated by Allan Mansoor.

VOICES OF MODERATION NEEDED
With the likelihood of Katrina Foley being elected to the School Board in November and having to abandon her City Council seat, there's a chance for this city to place a new majority on the City Council - one not driven by a divisive agenda. Even if Foley loses her bid for the School Board, there are two seats up for grabs in November, so it is possible to select people to lead this city for most of the rest of this decade who have a more moderate, sensible view of how this city should be managed.

EXTREMISTS NEED NOT APPLY
No, I didn't say "liberal", "progressive" or Democrat, just as I didn't say "conservative" or "Republican". I don't think folks at the extreme ends of the political spectrum are good for our town, as witnessed by the past decade when knee-jerk, far-right wing conservatives have called the shots. We need to push partisan extremism out of our local politics. I think it's important for us to select smart, well-educated, articulate, committed members of the community, regardless their political persuasion, to chart the course for our future - folks who can stand toe-to-toe and/or shoulder-to-shoulder with men like Rush Hill and help chart the course for our shared concerns - like the airport, for example.

LEADERS WITH VISION
I think it's important to elect leaders who actually understand that Costa Mesa is not an island, that it's part of a regional community of cities who share many common interests. In the case of Newport Beach, we share a common border, a school district and the impact of the airport, for starters. Instead of approaching every issue as an adversary, as has been the case in the recent past, we need smart folks who can grasp the importance of working together for the good of both communities. With the very obvious exception of Foley, none of our current crew seems to get it. We need leaders with vision - those who can look beyond the end of their noses and guide our city into the future.

LOOKING FOR BETTER CANDIDATES
So, we're off into a new campaign season. Before too long your mailboxes will be stuffed to overflowing with slick propaganda pieces designed to mislead you on important issues and misrepresent opponents views. It's up to us to find those good folks in our community with the skills to serve and convince them to give it a shot. We deserve much better than we've gotten lately.

"LEADERSHIP TOMORROW"?
To all you graduates of the excellent "Leadership Tomorrow" program I say, " tomorrow is today"! It's time to step up and demonstrate that training you received. It's time to lead our community - today!