Catie Curtis + Meg Hutchinson: Music Seen at One Longfellow Square, December 14, 2008

Published in the Portland Phoenix

A full-ish crowd sought refuge from the lingering effects of the ice storm at One Longfellow Square, finding enough warmth and electricity to urge them into doing the wave — the wave, at One Longfellow! — not once but twice for Catie Curtis and Meg Hutchinson.

Hutchinson started off with a too-short set of bright yet mellow folk, mostly off her latest album, Come Up Full (2008, Red House Records). Her guitar meshed beautifully with her gently gritty voice — both were playful and lively, and served to showcase her senses of humor (particularly in "Osa's Song," in which she confesses to being "one of those people you know who" has all sorts of silly dog-obsessed habits), dramatic tension (lamenting the meaninglessness of too much of anything in "America (Enough)"), and her abiding hope in the face of adversity.

Hutchinson began what became a night of duets by inviting Curtis to back her on her mournful-but-cheery final song, "Home," and joined Curtis for most of the main set, adding depth and richness to choruses, facilitating audience participation, and serving as a foil for a few of Curtis's song-intro stories. Curtis opened with a solo of the timely "Long Night Moon" (the title track of a 2006 album on Compass Records), and moved smoothly through a set of old and new songs, all with her blues-and-country style of folk music.

Curtis mixed the dignified soulfulness of the traditional Christmas carol "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" with the exuberance of "Be Sixteen With Me," a song by Boston folkie Don White about parents who escape for a joyride, leaving their kids at home to worry.

Several of the songs — including the love-packed "Elizabeth" and the night-ending "Deliver Me" — were audience requests. Curtis's parents, who still live in Saco (where Curtis grew up), were in attendance, and also managed to put in a request that drove home the mostly reverent tone of the night: the hymn-like "Passing Through," a reminder that whatever the planet does to us, we must still care for it.

Press Releases: Looking up

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Thanks to the ice storm, we've all heard them by now: the thrumming, throbbing, foreboding musical themes of the local TV news stations' storm coverage — when the news anchors wear sweaters in the studio, the meteorologists wear parkas in the sleet, and reporters and videographers wear slickers next to snowplows.

All three Portland-based stations are taking their weather forecasting into the 21st century, posting live (or near-live) weather maps and radar images on their Web sites. Some of it is packaging, and some is hype, but there are pretty interesting things going on as well.

The most interesting packaging is WMTW (Channel 8, the Hearst-Argyle-owned ABC affiliate), with a grid on its weather Web page that can be customized to put the seven-day forecast up top and the alerts at the bottom, or in whatever arrangement you like; 18 different ways to slice-and-dice weather information are offered up. (The other stations have the standard choices of radar and other maps, as well as graphical, text, and video forecasts.)

Now, the hype. Everybody advertises "Doppler radar," even though you don't want any other kind of radar for weather-forecasting purposes; Doppler (technically, pulse-Doppler) is the only type of radar that shows not only a storm's velocity and direction, but also its intensity and precipitation rate.

In the Midwest, weather-radar competitions are truly ridiculous, with some stations even having 3-D imagery showing not only precipitation, wind speed, and direction, but also the altitudes at which the clouds are located and how they are moving — it can be an amazing lesson in how tornados form.

We have begun this sort of hype, though; WGME (Channel 13, the Sinclair-owned CBS affiliate) has "Doppler HD," which, it must be said, is not high-definition in the standard TV sense. Rather, it's an assembly of radar data set up so meteorologists can zoom in and out visually during their presentations.

And then there's the useful stuff. WMTW has "Interactive Radar," which lays the radar picture over a satellite photo of the ground, so you can zoom in on any location you like around the country and see what's happening there in near-real time (it's roughly a 10-minute delay).

They all list storm-related closings on their Web sites, but WMTW enhances the service with e-mail alerts; WCSH (Channel 6, the Gannett-owned NBC affiliate) does even better, offering both e-mail and text alerts to mobile phones. (My wife works in a school, and last Friday, her school-staff phone tree was faster than the WCSH text alert, but only by a few minutes.)

WGME and WMTW have a "desktop weather application" that you can run on your computer. It shows real-time weather conditions for your zip code (saving you the trouble of looking out the window), allows you to watch streaming news and weather updates, and provides severe-weather alerts on demand. Both stations' services are identical, which is not surprising, given that they're provided by the same company (myweather.net). In the process of downloading the program, you can sign up for e-mail alerts for various weather advisories (issued by the National Weather Service).

For the real die-hards, though, WCSH has gone fully overboard, digitally broadcasting "News Center Weather Plus," though its current incarnation will end with the year (because NBC bought the Weather Channel). For the next couple weeks, the 24-hour weather forecasts will continue, with local current-conditions displays and five-day forecasts for individual Maine towns, as well as statewide forecasts, local radar, and national displays. WCSH general manager Steve Thaxton says he has not yet decided whether to continue the service in some form into 2009.

Letter to the editor of American Journalism Review

Published in American Journalism Review, December 2008-January 2009

Philip Meyer's "The Elite Newspaper of the Future" (October/November) was very enlightening to me, but perhaps not in the way he intended. I absolutely agree with his assessment that "the newspapers that survive will probably [have] some kind of hybrid content: analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting in a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant updating and reader interaction on the Web." And I agree that "the information age has created a demand for processed information. We need someone to put it into context, give it theoretical framing and suggest ways to act on it." Newspapers' core audiences will indeed be "the educated, opinion-leading, news-junkie" people who "demand ... quality" that goes beyond "stenographic coverage of public meetings, channeling press releases or listing unanalyzed collections of facts."

But rather than being earthshaking in itself, I would argue that his apparently recent realization of these truths of the modern media market tells us a great deal about what has gone wrong in the mainstream media. Meyer's ideas could have been taken verbatim from the editorial and business plans of any of the hundreds of alternative newspapers around the country – many of which have been flourishing for years.

Now comes Meyer, saying the work we in the alternative press have been doing for years is the "future," even the "elite"! The daily papers that have turned up their noses at our work may now not only acknowledge our existence, but deign to follow our lead in search of what we already have: a sustainable model with extremely high print readership and rapidly growing audiences online!

Which is all by way of saying Meyer is absolutely correct – just incomplete. And in the name of completeness, I want to note that his piece does one disservice to leaders of daily newspapers, by suggesting the solution is a matter of developing "hybrid content." Not quite. The solution, for many of you, is figuring out what is actually happening in the communities you wish to serve, and how to reach people who have long since given up on you. But you'll have to compete with those of us who are already doing it.

Jeff Inglis
Managing editor
Portland Phoenix
Portland, Maine

Press Releases: PPH almost sold. Now what?

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The long-floundering Portland Press Herald is about to have a new owner. At least, all signs suggest that the money necessary to seal the deal will come through by the end of the year. There are financial details to be finalized, and there's a slim chance the money won't materialize, but involved parties tell the Portland Phoenix that pens are very close to the financial paper, and that the financing may include an employee-ownership component.

As many had speculated, the likely new owner will be Maine Media Investments — owned by the governor's brother, Bob Baldacci; former US senator and defense secretary Bill Cohen; his son Kevin, a former Turner Broadcasting executive; housing and real-estate developer Mike Liberty; and Pennsylvania newspaper publisher Richard Connor (who was born in Bangor). Soon, this group will no doubt be making public what they plan to do to recover the paper's dying circulation, plummeting advertising revenue, and rock-bottom newsroom morale.

Connor himself was recently heard to say — while out and about in Portland — that he could see why the paper was struggling, since it was "so thin it blows off the front porch in the morning." That might signal an inclination to expand the news coverage, which has shrunk considerably in recent months, but it's unclear who would do that work: the employees union is "bracing" for significant layoffs after the deal is finalized, according to Portland Newspaper Guild acting administrative officer Kathy Munroe.

The new owners will have to navigate the complicated quagmire of determining what their readers actually want. The biggest dispute among the audience appears to be where a revamped Press Herald would strike a balance between local coverage and national and international news.

Some hints can be found in independent blogs. A poster named MediaDog at AsMaineGoes wants less wire-service copy, saying in an August post, "In this Internet era most wire news is stale by the time the papers reached readers' doorsteps."

At MediaMutt, Phoenix columnist Al Diamon's blog on the Down East magazine Web site, one commenter suggested last week that a more major overhaul is needed: "The newspaper has limited value in terms of keeping readers informed. I don't think I've ever seen a shallower newspaper than the version that is being published today."

Perhaps the best way to gauge the reaction from the Press Herald's audience, though, is to look at the comments on the paper's own Web site — specifically, those talking about the sale itself.

"I'm getting the Friday, Saturday, Sunday [subscription package] deal and the news is the same in all three papers," wrote one person, who said she is canceling her subscription.

Another commenter promised to "buy this rag IF it had some substantial US/world news," while simultaneously lamenting the lack of "real investigative journalism" and follow-up on "real issues." But that person did, apparently, agree with Connor's perception of the paper as too thin: "Once you dump the flyers and classifieds you don't have enough to line a bird cage!"

Other posters suggested: "Report from the middle of the road and tell me what is going on locally," and "focus in-depth on local news, and leave national and international news to the larger papers, television, and the Internet."

But one commenter just might have hit on a key element of any new owner's strategy: "I want to ask Maine Media Investments, if they can use a NO COST Reprter. I am much more then willing to volunteer my time and expertise. I can do indepth stories on Social needs, for free."

Of course, the citizen-journalism approach being experimented with by many struggling daily newspapers has several hazards, some of which are apparent in the posted offer just quoted — to cut down the costs of covering the news, grammar and spelling may no longer be worth paying for.

A few other races to note: Down the ballot

Published in the Portland Phoenix

You can get your fill of reading about the presidential, congressional, state-legislative, city-council, and school-committee races a few pages farther on, but there are a few other questions Portlanders will have to vote on this Tuesday.

First up is the question of whether the city should elect a charter commission to consider OVERHAULING THE CITY’S CHARTER. The major issue under discussion is whether the position of mayor should be elected directly by the people — rather than chosen by councilors from among themselves as it is now. But the charter commission could change other provisions of the city’s basic government structure as well, if the commission’s members decided to. Among the possible ideas is one floated by Tina Smith, who is running for the at-large city-council seat, that could allow legal immigrants and refugees who live in Portland but are not US citizens to vote or otherwise participate in local government. If the charter commission is approved, candidates for the commission would stand for election next year.

In the meantime, there are some CLERICAL CHANGES TO THE CITY CHARTER also up for approval. In sum, they bring the charter into compliance with state laws governing how election wardens and ward clerks should be selected, and also change deadlines for nominating petitions to give the city clerk’s office more time to certify that signatures on the petitions belong to registered voters.

In regional business, voters will choose one Portland representative on the PORTLAND WATER DISTRICT Board of Trustees between former trustee James Willey and former Portland school-committee member Ben Meiklejohn. It is a five-year term.

In the first of three county races, incumbent REGISTER OF PROBATE Republican Teri McRae is seeking re-election to a four-year term, and is being challenged by former county register of deeds Democrat John O’Brien. The job involves recording and preserving life records — such as wills, name changes, and adoption records.

In a race for a four-year seat on the CUMBERLAND COUNTY COMMISSION, the three-member board that oversees county government, attorney and former Portland city councilor James Cloutier, a Democrat, faces independent Jonathan Berry, a Falmouth resident who runs a solo law practice from an office in Portland.

And for a COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION, to study and recommend changes to the way county government is run, there are no declared candidates to represent Portland, so the election will be by write-in only.