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Michael Massing’s voice has long been part of the Columbia Journalism Review in print. He is a columnist, a former executive editor, an active contributing editor, and a longtime friend and adviser of the print magazine. Now he is trying his hand at press criticism and analysis online. Look for him on Wednesdays, and on other days when the spirit moves him, on CJR.org.

While doing some recent research on the news business, I came upon this remarkable fact: Katie Couric’s annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric’s salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one. NPR has seventeen foreign bureaus (which costs it another $9.4 million a year); CBS has twelve. Few figures, I think, better capture the absurd financial structure of the network news.

This is not a new development, of course. It’s been unfolding since 1986, when billionaire Laurence Tisch bought CBS and eviscerated its news division in order to boost profits. (For a sharp, first-hand account of this process, see Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, The Business of News, and the Danger to Us All, by former CBS correspondent Tom Fenton.) But the issue seems worth revisiting in light of the recent naming of Diane Sawyer to replace Charlie Gibson as the anchor of ABC’s World News. We don’t yet know how much Sawyer is going to be paid, but it will no doubt surpass Gibson’s current estimated salary of $8 million. Sawyer will thus be perpetuating the corrosive, top-heavy system of the network news.

What’s striking is how little notice this received in the flood of coverage of Sawyer’s appointment. With the notable exception of Jack Shafer in Slate, who cheekily urged Sawyer to turn down the job “and persuade ABC News to divert the millions it ordinarily pays its anchor and spend it on 50 or 80 additional reporters to break stories,” the press treated her ascension as a dramatic milestone. “At ABC, an Anchor Shift; for TV, an Image Shift,” proclaimed The New York Times on its front page. “The arrival of Ms. Sawyer will comprehensively alter the long-established image of an avuncular male nightly news anchor,” Bill Carter and Brian Stelter solemnly declared. “With Katie Couric, who took the CBS anchor position in 2006, two of the three main network news voices will be female, a role that in the past has punished others, like Barbara Walters and Connie Chung.” Carter and Stelter prattled on about the competition among the anchors, the ratings implications of the change, and the challenge ABC faces in replacing Sawyer on Good Morning America, which, they helpfully noted, “is by far the most profitable program in the news division and where she is the biggest attraction for viewers.” About the journalism? Not so much. This is sadly typical of much of the Times’s coverage of TV news—a preoccupation with stars, their images, network strategies, and the all-important ratings race.

Interesantes ideas y comentarios de M. Massing.

En inglés hay una frase del propietario del New York Times, Arthur Suzberger, Jr., que dice "in newspapers, what matter it's no paper". No hay que confundir el soporte donde recibimos información como la función que cumple. El periodismo permite informar, discutir... Esas funciones no van a ser satisfechas por la misma gente ni por los mismos medios, pero no hay que pensar que van a dejar de ser cumplidas. El problema es de adaptación. Una versión rigurosa dice que se muere y una más amplia dice que se adapta y se transforma.

Además, ¿quién dice la muerte de periodismo? Los periodistas. Cuando trabajaba como corresponsal en Nicaragua durante la guerra, éramos un pequeño grupo de periodistas que decíamos lo que estaba pasando. Hoy hay miles de personas que informan por el medio que sea. Hemos perdido el monopolio del acceso y de la distribución de la información. Las nuevas tecnologías permiten crear un espacio antes inexistente como el de la información a tiempo real y realizada por no profesionales. El uso de Twitter, por ejemplo, es información y periodismo.

Discutible e interesante.

Next time you think about getting snarky on a social network, consider this: A Chicago woman's Twitter post about her "moldy apartment" has landed her with a $50,000 lawsuit from a local management company.

Updates on social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, have led to lawsuits and resignations.

(ABC News Photo Illustration)

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Horizon Group Management LLC, which has more than 1,500 tenants in the Chicago area, filed a libel lawsuit Monday against Amanda Bonnen, a former tenant.

Although it appears that Bonnen has since closed down her Twitter account, a May 12 tweet from "abnonnen" read: "Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon really thinks it's okay."

Bonnen did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABCNews.com.

Asunto a seguir, entre otros.

Just before the start of spring term, a friend and colleague in journalism sent an e-mail message to our department: Technology had changed, she wrote; perhaps our reporting curriculum should change with it. She planned to teach with a focus on live blogging and Twitter, and suggested that those students not particularly interested in using the new technology should be tracked into the other reporting class.

That is, my reporting class—one in which we emphatically would not use Twitter.

Un comentario al largo artículo dice "Anyone who thinks Twitter will replace journalism is missing the point: journalism itself is something more than a profession. It's a mode of existence, and it's no longer only the domain of those paid to report on the news."

Otro, bien sensato: "Twitter should be used as the media to draw attention to your original news and articles (Links). Don't use it a the media to publish your articles."

Atentos a la lección de rigor informativo y de ética periodística que da hoy PRISA. El País la publica en portada y a cuatro columnas sobre el presidente del Poder Judicial: “Dívar apela a sus creencias para impedir el informe sobre el aborto”. Yo esperaba a Dívar proclamando que su voto no se debió al Art.15 de la Constitución (”Todos tienen derecho a la vida”), ni al Art.3 de la DUDH (”Todo individuo tiene derecho a la vida”) ni a la Sentencia 53/1985 del TC (“la vida humana es un devenir, un proceso que comienza con la gestación”), sino al 5º mandamiento (”No matarás”). Nada de eso: según El País, su titular de portada corresponde a algo que Carlos Dívar “comentó a personas de su entorno”. Flipante.

Sorprende, desde luego: es lo meno que cabe decir.

It might be the pessimism that strikes in later years, it might be the clear-mindedness that age endows us with, but I feel a certain kind of hesitation mixed with scepticism that keeps me from intervening (at the request of the editorial office) in defence of freedom of press.

Allow me to explain: when someone has to take a stand in defence of freedom of press, it means that society (and also a large portion of the press) is already ailing. In democracies that we would define as "strong', there's no need to defend freedom of press because no one would even dream of limiting it. This is the first reason for my scepticism, followed by a series of others.

The Italian problem is not Silvio Berlusconi. History (dare I say from Catiline on) has been brimming over with adventurous men, who were not lacking charisma, who had a restricted sense of State but an extremely broad sense of their own advantage, who wanted to establish their own private power by clambering over parliaments, judiciaries and constitutions, distributing favours to their own courtiers and (at times) to their own courtesans, identifying their own pleasure with the interest of the community at large. But these men were not always successful in gaining the power they aspired because society itself did not allow them to. When society did allow them to, then why take it out on these men and not on the society that allowed them to do as they pleased?

Lo dicho para la anterior versión italiana.

di Umberto Eco

Il premier vuole imbavagliare l'informazione. E nella nostra società malata la maggioranza degli italiani sembra pronta ad accettare anche questo strappo. Ma il famoso intellettuale dice: 'Io non ci sto'.

 

Umberto Eco

Sarà il pessimismo della tarda età, sarà la lucidità che l'età porta con sé, ma provo una certa esitazione, frammista a scetticismo, a intervenire, su invito della redazione, in difesa della libertà di stampa. Voglio dire: quando qualcuno deve intervenire a difesa della libertà di stampa vuole dire che la società, e con essa gran parte della stampa, è già malata. Nelle democrazie che definiremo 'robuste' non c'è bisogno di difendere la libertà di stampa, perché a nessuno viene in mente di limitarla.

Questa la prima ragione del mio scetticismo, da cui discende un corollario. Il problema italiano non è Silvio Berlusconi. La storia (vorrei dire da Catilina in avanti) è stata ricca di uomini avventurosi, non privi di carisma, con scarso senso dello Stato ma senso altissimo dei propri interessi, che hanno desiderato instaurare un potere personale, scavalcando parlamenti, magistrature e costituzioni, distribuendo favori ai propri cortigiani e (talora) alle proprie cortigiane, identificando il proprio piacere con l'interesse della comunità. È che non sempre questi uomini hanno conquistato il potere a cui aspiravano, perché la società non glielo ha permesso. Quando la società glielo ha permesso, perché prendersela con questi uomini e non con la società che li ha lasciati fare?

De acuerdo o no, hay que considerar lo dicho por Eco.

Asistimos a una empresa de ingeniería social en occidente –con pretensiones imperialistas– que aturde por su ambición, velocidad y falta de escrúpulos. El rediseño social impulsado por algunos líderes políticos y gobiernos es de un calado que sólo se puede medir con los parámetros de la globalización y la influencia de los medios de comunicación, que son los instrumentos más sutiles empleados por sus urdidores, y que combinan, cuando pueden, con otros más directos, como la aprobación de leyes a favor del aborto, la manipulación de embriones, la eutanasia o la ideología de género.

No está de más seguir lo que se publica sobre el relativismo en la vida ciudadana. en este caso, lo escrito por Ángel López-Sidro López, Profesor de Derecho de la Universidad de Jaén.

In a perfect world former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya would be in jail in his own country right now, awaiting trial. The Honduran attorney general has charged him with deliberately violating Honduran law and the Supreme Court ordered his arrest in Tegucigalpa on June 28.

But the Honduran military whisked him out of the country, to Costa Rica, when it executed the court's order.

His expulsion has given his supporters ammunition to allege that he was treated unlawfully. Now he is an international hero of the left. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Cuban dictator Raúl Castro, and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez are all insisting that he be restored to power. This demand is baseless. Mr. Zelaya's detention was legal, as was his official removal from office by Congress.

If there is anything debatable about the crisis it is the question of whether the government can defend the expulsion of the president. In fact it had good reasons for that move and they are worth Mrs. Clinton's attention if she is interested in defending democracy.

Besides eagerly trampling the constitution, Mr. Zelaya had demonstrated that he was ready to employ the violent tactics of chavismo to hang onto power. The decision to pack him off immediately was taken in the interest of protecting both constitutional order and human life.

Más sobre la cuestión de Honduras, ahora bastante silenciada tras los primeros tambores de guerra. El WSJ no parece impresionado por la señora Clinton.

«No diga que tiene unas excelentes relaciones con la Santa Sede cuando está desobedeciendo desde el año 1991»

El Arzobispo de Lima y Primado del Perú, Cardenal Juan Luis Cipriani, pidió a las autoridades de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), adecuar sus estatutos a lo que pide la Santa Sede a las universidades católicas, y llamó al rector de esta casa de estudios, Marcial Rubio, a no desinformar a la opinión pública.

Las Instituciones universitarias que llevan en su título la palabra "Pontificia" en principio se supone que han de seguir las indicaciones pontificias.