Clearly, Steve Jobs is pissed. I would be, too. You pour thousands of hours collectively into a project like this and you want people to just use the damned thing, enjoy it, and have it change their lives on some level. That the media has churned up such a storm over this issue has got to be not-a-little-bit frustrating.

Apple’s media materials are always top notch, and what they produced highlighting the antenna design process at Apple, the tour of the inner sanctum of antenna design on campus, meet the standard. They included videos on apple.com and in the conference demonstrating the exact same signal loss on previous generation iPhones, along with phones from Nokia, Blackberry, HTC, and Samsung. Hold the phone in just the right way, signal drops. In fact, as Josh pointed out in the linked piece over at Apple Insider,

In June, Nokia’s official blog poked fun at the iPhone 4 “death grip” issue. The post included a variety of pictures showing a range of grips, encouraging consumers to feel free to hold their Nokia device any way they like without suffering any signal loss.

Users of the site then posted links to videos showing signal loss on several of Nokia’s handsets, as well as instructions from a Nokia manual warning users “to avoid touching the antenna area” and that “contact with antennas affects the communication quality.”

I waxed sarcastically on Twitter that Verizon’s cheeky attitude toward this antenna thing would bite them in the ass. I’m bummed the prediction isn’t wholly accurate in that I didn’t use Nokia as my case point. That would have made me far more prescient. At least someone looks foolish here. It’s never really smart to publish material dragging your competitors through the mud on untested, unconfirmed reports.

Which is why I’m on the fence about Apple doing just that in this case, dragging these other manufacturers into the ring with them on this issue.

As uncharacteristic as it is, I’m not sure they had another choice. This is a PR disaster. It’s a disaster specifically because it’s a nominally interesting story that has been spun out of Apple’s tight control, not because there is any more or less scandal to it. Their response strategy of choice is clearly to soften by deflection — get us all thinking about these other guys so we’re not so focused on the iPhone 4 soft spot.

Apple’s biggest issue in this mess is completely self-created, and it’s not that they created a phone that has a major antenna flaw (we know there’s a flaw, I’m just saying that’s not the biggest problem here). It’s that Steve Jobs stood on stage for the iPhone announcement and choose to point out that the antenna design is legendary, revolutionary, incredible, and then showed the world exactly where the antenna is. The fact that the world media has been so focused on the antenna is a problem of Apple’s own making. Given the tone and timbre of the press conference, it’s clear that Apple knows this. Their own duct tape solution is to give out the bumpers for free. It’s payola for those who bought the phone, love the phone, and want to keep the phone in spite of their problems with connectivity.

The other manufacturers have come out pissed. Rightfully so, but it sure is hard to defend indignation in the face of video evidence. Apple knows this. So does Nokia, RIM, Samsung. Best case result of Antennagate is that we all get the phone of our dreams because of a renewed focus on better, smarter, clearer antennas from all these manufacturers. At least we know from their responses so far that the intent may be there to do it, if only because Apple just made the target in Cupertino that much bigger.

In TechCrunch’s follow up, Arrington makes an ironically apt comparison. Job’s coming on stage to give all this data of the reality of the ecosystem, that 30-day returns at AT&T is about 1.7% — down from 6% for the iPhone 3GS, is akin to Facebook execs coming out to talk about how people really aren’t jumping off the service as a result of Facebook Privacygate 2009-10. But for all those affected — punditry, gadget hounds, privacy advocates, the works — those affected are not likely to change their opinions based on reported data from the company. People who feel betrayed by Facebook will not come back to the service as a result of a press conference. And folks like Arrington will continue to be as venomous as ever of the iPhone.

Anandtech has been leading the charge with data-driven coverage of this whole mess. After the iPhone iOS 4.0.1 update which mixed up all the bar data display across iPhones, they posted some terrific graphs which compare the dBm mapping to bars displayed to cover just what has changed on the phone and how it will help to convey more clearly what level of coverage you might be able to expect in a certain area.

So then, as long as Apple is trotting out the dog and pony show about their antenna labs, where was this data from them? If Anandtech is able to produce such terrific analysis as an external party, it seems only natural to have even greater expectations of Apple. Just because the Blackberry or Nokia drops two bars has no effective comparison to the iPhone dropping two bars without those dBm comparables — they’re just bars, tiny pixels that (as far as I understand it) have little relation to actual connectivity at all. On TWiT 255, Jerry Pournelle and Spencer Webb remind us that on digital phones, bars mean little; that a more effective indicator would be a lightbulb. If it’s on, you have signal. If it’s off, you don’t.

[UPDATE: Dammit. Gruber and Aaron Swartz beat me to this little bit of wisdom. I hate being late to the party.]

I got my iPhone 4 the day before it launched. I’ve dropped one call. I was talking to my dad, and driving through an area at the top of Sylvan Hill on highway 26 in Portland. With my iPhone 3Gs, I’d drop calls there every single day. With the iPhone 4, I’ve dropped only one, in spite of regular use in that area. Other than that, the phone has absolutely out-performed all my previous iPhones. I have a bumper, but I rarely use it. Yes, I’ll likely go get the refund Apple is offering for it, just cause, you know, 30 bucks.

Still, my impression here is not that Apple has perpetrated some kind of crime on consumers. I really do believe that Apple is learning as they go along based on data they’re collecting in real time. This is a monster of their own creation and is more a result of the death grip they have on their own communications, testing, and public relations policies than anything else. It’s a trade-off, and if you’re going to build policy around secrecy, this is the no-win scenario you have to be willing to confront. Kobayashi Maru, indeed.

Couldn’t agree more.

So it disappoints me to see commentators on TV today dinging the iPad for a lack of multitasking. A tech expert whose mission is to communicate tricky technology to civilian audiences can’t let that pitch go by with a flat “no.” You also shouldn’t offer a flat “yes” but at least the statement “the iPad OS multitasks” is technically correct. You’re there to educate. Which means that you don’t want people to come away thinking that (for example) iPod playback stops when you try to get your mail or fire off a Tweet.

• 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
• 42% of college graduates never read another book.
• 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

To be fair, I don’t go to bookstores often anymore, but I’m a Kindle guy. The rest of this stuff? So much for respondents inflating their answers to look smart…

The intent of the project was spot on, however. The company was looking for a way to promote it’s own goodwill. I was — and still am — a staunch believer that the best way to frame goodwill is through the voices of your best customers: guilt by association.

Oregon Humane Society: Health Net Customer Story Part 1 from Pete Wright on Vimeo.

The slow progress on this particular project has been surprising. I’m not sure why it is that so many of the Health Net customers have been so leery to work with us. Whether it’s the “association” with a major health insurance concern that bothers them, or suspiscion that another company would produce this sort of promotion on behalf — and with the financial backing of — a third party, we’ve been through nearly a dozen potential clients who have been tough to nail down to a commitment to participate.

On the flip side, the second film is on Burgerville, and my experience there was fantastic. I’m going to be cutting the piece in the next week or so and will post the film to the Health Net YouTube channel, and eventually to my clips on vimeo.

The third and fourth films we’re working with Keen footwear and SelMet machining. I’m not sure yet what SelMet is all about, but as for Keen, let’s just say I’m crossing my fingers for a few samples to join my collection.

This is more of a cardinal law of organic self-promotion, and less of a journalistic technique. But it flies in the face of Lacy’s interview strategy: put herself in the middle of every story, the sun around which all her subjects orbit. On this last note, it’s certainly time to stop talking about her, even as an object lesson.

In this personal interview with a YouTuber Omar Gallaga, I think she says it all — and highlights through what she doesn’t say just how backward it is to call her a “journalist.”

http://www.viddler.com/explore/allfacebook/videos/13/

For more Sarah Lacy goodness, head here: Facebook is All Grown Up. In it, she takes her low-brow sorority chiq to turn an ‘interview’ between her and a grown-up into a name-drop-a-thon in which she completely destroys the thread of the discussion by turning herself into a pundit.

This is not a discussion of Sarah Lacy as an accomplished media personality. It’s a sad reality check on the level of acceptable behavior that comes with finding yourself both a reporter of news and a celebrity yourself.

With Zuckerberg, the audience was not amused. Enough so that many began to yell out questions themselves, rather than listen to Lacy’s self-aggrandizing inner-circle-speak. Her public response in the interview? “You guys try doing what I do for a living. It’s not as easy as it looks, OK?”

Where Sarah went sideways.

1. She shunned any healthy respect for her audience. From the interview questions, and the direction she took the discussion early on, it was clear she had her own agenda for the Facebook founder and showed little interest in the caliber of both social and technical expertise in the room. To be fair, Zuckerberg likely had put some constraints on the kinds of questions Lacy could ask — it’s a reasonable PR expectation. But her dismissal of the audience heckling showed a rampant disrespect for her listeners and her role in addressing their needs.
2. She is not a humble person. I had never followed Sarah Lacy. I’d heard of her and read her blog from time to time when linked. In catching up on her work, it is clear that she is a media personality first, and a journalist a very distant… let’s say… fifth. She’ll be a great addition to “Inside Edition” one day. Once the audience revolts, concede and rebuild the relationship. Simply spitting in the fire will not put it out.
3. She pretended it never happened. On her Twitter feed: “seriously screw all you guys. I did my best to ask a range of things.” That, for Lacy, appears to be where the story ends. In the post-keynote interview between Zuckerberg and Lacy, the interview falls soundly back into PR speak, her nodding acceptance of his every word punctuated with a resounding “Uh-huh” precisely ever three seconds. Her questions completely ignorant of the events preceding this interview, which had occurred minutes prior on the keynote stage.

Becoming a savvy interviewer takes a great deal of media training and experience in front of a camera. If her ego can handle it, this experience is a ripe learning opportunity on how to handle yourself professionally, maturely, clearly, and confidently online, in the media, on camera, and in life.

If you don’t think the writer’s strike has been good for new media producers, check again. As far as pilots go, I would watch this over … I dunno … “Class of 99″ any day.

If you head over to ICN, check out “Inappropriate Workplace” too. There’s some good humor in that there broadcast.

If you have feedback, leave it on Daniel’s wall over on Facebook.

One of my favorite podcasts is WebbAlert, a technology news show hosted by Morgan Webb, highlighting daily tech news and social media memes. It’s daily, no more than about six minutes per episode, and Webb does a good job of covering the geek news I need with a ripe sarcasm I crave.

For the last few weeks, WebbAlert has had a compelling new sponsor: DeVry University. It’s a perfect match — while I know very little about the place, I know they have technical and gaming programs that fit the market of the show. But more important than that, it shows that the adult education industry is dipping its toes into some more progressive waters.

Don’t get me wrong here: this is not an issue of conservative advertising values. It’s an issue of ignorance. The new education marketplace that so many laud as leading a new era of access is not so daring when it comes to ad space. They count even more than many sectors on consistent and dramatic lead flow.

With podcast popularity apparently growing as fast as it is, likely precipitated by the ongoing WGA strike and the dearth of traditional media that results, more and more people are turning to the net for their entertainment and their news. It shows a cool savvy that some lucky DeVry marketing manager pushed this initiative through.

Slightly related, I got an email from a good friend who just started working for DeVry:

Started at Devry this week, feels like foreign lands. When I asked when my matrix starts I was told “Take your time, learn the culture here…we don’t want to shove you out there before you “get it”.” I thought they were screwing with me.

If you’ve ever seen the enrollment rooms at Phoenix, you know just how funny that is.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism compared stories on user-news sites with content from traditional news sources. A key finding: The news agenda of the user-sites — Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us — was markedly different from that of the mainstream press. Many of the stories users selected didn’t appear anywhere among the top stories in the mainstream media coverage studied.

Shock and awe indeed. This is covered in full at journalism.org. The cognitive dissonance here stems from news organizations’ need to keep the lights on, while the populace is, in most cases, interested in being informed. The challenge: a cursory glance across any of the social sites bears little in terms of news I need to know. Let’s see… top “World & Business” headlines right now on digg.com…

OK, so I’m interested in Ron Paul and Castro. But 7 Underwater Wonders of the World? You build me an underwater city as a weekend getaway at the foot of the Mariana Trench, and we can talk.

He’s most known for his 16-year stint with Ted Koppel on Nightline, winning awards for his coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing and TWA Flight 800. But, when that show was cancelled, he made an interesting move: Al Jazeera English.

He’s lead anchor over there now, charged with the western hemisphere. The network strives to be the first non-western international news network, diving head first into deep waters heavily patroled by CNN, Fox, MSNBC. They aim to compliment the others, to shift the balance of the international news mechanism, he says, and they do that by becoming a compliment to existing coverage, not a competitor.

“Where other agencies spend 80 percent of their coverage in North American, European, Japanese, and Israeli stories,” he says, “Al Jazeera, on the other hand, does 70 percent of its reporting everywhere else.”

And of course, he opened with Iraq.

“One thing every Iraqi knows,” Marash said, “is that they don’t want to be dominated by outsiders. The country has a long history of domination, and the Americans ignored that history. Instead, they went in with distinctly American ideas of good governance, inconsiderate of what the Iraqis want.”

Marash contends that we wrote our own book. That we ignored volumes of data in the world indicating that what we were planning would end badly. That the Middle East has played host countless times to invading bodies and without fail, the conflict ends badly. That, given all this, we should have known better.

It’s hard not to get into a discussion of conspiracy theory here. And it’s difficult, by the same token, to contradict Marash, who himself has spent years in the region covering these decades-long stories. But boiling down the current situation in Iraq to misunderstood objectives might just be too simple, ingnorant of administration objectives beyond stemming conflict in the region; objectives likely to take years to uncover.

More detail means richer communication, Marash says of journalists. “Reporters must represent reality with fidelity.”

And that’s what Al Jazeera English aims to do. By reducing the number of stories reported in any given half-hour segment, the network aims to drive up the quality and depth of coverage across all stories. It’s a challenge, he says, as the staff of the network comes largely from mainstream media, and breaking bad habits is an ongoing fight.

Dave Marash is a smart guy. Put him on the podium and he’s your wise old grandfather dutifully illumniating the world for you, one race at a time. He’s been everywhere, seen it all, and has the breath left in him to talk about it at length. But in an era in which major media news is losing ground to infotainment, Marash’s vision of Al Jazeera might just have arrived in the nick of time.

The Q&A brought out the question that most were undoubtedly thinking: “What’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing working for Al Jazeera?” Marash was ditifully diplomatic and long-winded with a response that ended up having quite a fine point on it.

There were sort of two responses among my colleagues. The majority of the responses were, “Well, that’s Marash. If there’s a brick wall, he’ll put his head into it.” And the second response was, sort of, “How dare he.” And particularly, “How dare he, as a Jew, work for the Arabs.” In many ways, it’s the same mentality as the Dubai ports case. “How dare we contract for port security with a global firm that happens to be based in the Arab world?”

Al Jazeera is a funny network. In the West, it’s the voicebox of the terrorist arm, heavily criticized for displaying Al Quaeda beheadings and desert manifestos. But what we don’t see, Marash contends, is the network’s diligence in reporting both sides of the conflict, as graphic as those sides may be. That’s what happens when you have a boss “whose bottom line is not the bottom line, is not share-holder value, but is the product itself.”

No, you can’t tell from the picture. Here he looks angry. Brooding. Somber. Morose. He came out on stage and sat in the chair awaiting his introduction for nearly a full minute looking just… like… this.

Scarey.

But then, the humor came, delivered secretly in that NPR monotone taking us all by sweet surprise. Jokes about drugs and penises. Jokes about Chautauquans and good manners. But mostly, he joked at the expense of the media.

His message, of course, was not to be funny. He came to Chautauqua to talk about the many messages of the media, the many masters served in the business. Interestingly, while the previous speakers leading up to Williams focused on what they were doing to change the way they do business, to make media better, his message was far more empowering: if you don’t like what you’re watching on TV, what you’re reading in the papers, what you hear on the radio, turn it off. Write letters. Make calls. When demand shifts, the market will change to follow it.

Williams’ take on the primary pain the media causes our culture is rooted in fragmentation. Many of these concepts that drive immediate access to focused and filtered information on the web — RSS, portals, subscriptions, etc — naturally drives consumers of media to be generally less informed than their predecessors. It’s narrow-casting, not broadcasting, he says, and this fragmentation of signal is mirroring the fragmentation of our populace as well.

Once, we were a melting pot, culturally diverse Europeans just wanting a place to fit in. Now, we’re a stew, made up of Mexicans, Asians, Latin-Americans, Africans, all coming to the US with one agenda or another, looking to reclaim cultural heritage or identity, to celebrate, rather than fit in. And the media, in search of ratings and circulation, is catering to all those angles at once.

Fragmentation is happening along age lines as well, Williams says. Media latch on to stories about medicare, social security, and the high cost of prescription drugs, catering to the fifth of the American population now over age 65. In the mean time, a fourth of the population are under 18. These are the drive-by media consumers, targeted with flash and drama by the media, anything that will grab the attention of their cell phones, their instant messaging applications.

The conservative-liberal divide is the third media rift: Rush Limbaugh plays host to Vice President Cheny on his show exclusively, narrow-casting directly to the administration’s right.

“Honesty doesn’t play in this media picture, because it doesn’t comfort the audience,” Williams said. “It doesn’t allow them to feel secure in thier opinions when you stand up and tell them something they may not want to hear.”

Yes, Williams got serious. He is, after all, a serious newsman. Listening to his comments, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that he was on track to much broader exposure. If there’s a chance to rebuild an aging media infrastructure into a new, relevant broadcast medium, Williams will be at the front of it.

Then, he called in the “Network” reference, the legendary Howard Beale call to action, driving a nation to cry out, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Of course, that movie’s over 30 years old. What are we doing carrying on about the same message, the same frustration, three decades later?

To me, it’s because the better speech of that movie won out in real-life America. It’s Ned Beatty as Arthur Jensen scolding Howard Beale and extolling the meaning of the universe. It’s one of the greatest, most compelling monologues in cinema thanks to the brilliant expository of writer Paddy Chayefsky and as much as I want to repost it here entirely, I’ll just point you in the right direction to watch after a snippit:

You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and A T & T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state — Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime.

Arthur Jensen on YouTube
Arthur Jensen MP3

And this may be Juan Williams’ legacy, the same as Howard Beale’s, the same as Don Quixote. But, like Huffington yesterday, the world needs its radical flagwavers, the smart rebels, challenging the norm. He is an oasis in the desert, if the masses can take a minute to stop and listen.

I admit. I had the same thought. I’ve always sort of ascribed Huffington with the Ivanna Trump vibe — funky accent, firey speech, not a lot there. Now that I’ve seen her up close, I know that two out of those three are correct. I’m just not sure which two.

Obviously, she was here to contribute to the discussion on media, new media, ethics in media, and media bashing. To be sure, there’s been a boatload of each. But while the other folks in the discussion were from inside the fold, working in traditional media newsrooms and desperately trying to wrap their arms around this non-traditional whatnot, Huffington is coming at it from a different angle. She founded HuffingtonPost.com in 2005 and while she contends hers is one of the highest trafficked sites on the net, she doens’t hold much of a candle to the other representatives who’ve shared the stage with her so far this week. Click on the graph below to see Alexa.com’s rankings comparing her site to ABCNews.com, WashingtonPost.com, and nytimes.com (she’s at the bottom).

I’ve always had trouble with the fact that her site is not much more than linkbait — limited original editorial content sandwiching link after link to traditional media outlets. But if what she says comes to pass, the Huffington Post might just become a significant player in the media landscape.

While those in the mainstream media (“MSM” as she calls them), are working diligently to drive more of their content to some level of engagement online, she’s talking about opening brinck and mortar news bureaus of bloggers and other citizen journalists and researchers all driving to support the huffingtonpost.com so-called news machine.

This would be an interesting convergence of one massive groundswell of disorganized force crashing again a weathered and heavily beaten shore. But it just may go to support her central thesis: all media will survive. Print is not on it’s last breath, nor is broadcast. Nor is integrity or editorial ethic. We’re just all working to figure out new ways to use them.

Traditional media isn’t helping itself in this transition, however. She pounded on the state of the industry with the build-up to the war in Iraq, reminding the audience of known-erroneous information published in guise of fact turned journalists into “stenographers to power to a very large extent.”

If the country can’t trust traditional media to give us the straight dope on such things, we’ll turn to whomever steps up to the mic (nod to Michael J. Fox in that movie where he was Cheif of Staff to Michael Douglas for allowing me to ape that line poorly).

And it’s Huffington’s turn at the mic, to be sure.

Her talk was all about blogs, the blogosphere, technology, new media, and so on. Which made it all the more ironic that the first question in the Q&A was, “For those of us … who are Internet-impaired, would you define the term ‘blog’ and ‘blogger,’ and tell us what the difference in a blog and a website?”

Good question. There went the last hour.

Still, this is a woman who knows something about managing one’s reputation online. She converted from Republican to Democrat ten years ago and weathered a stream of slings and arrows aimed squarely at her.

I write in the book, I have a whole chapter, on how hard it is to change your mind in public. Because what happens is your friends really don’t what to have anything to do with you because they feel abandoned, and the people in whose direction you are going don’t trust you.

Huffington is carrying an important torch for those of us who’ve chosen to be online, and this audience is representative of a significant portion of the world population who don’t understand the online ecosystem, don’t recognize the importance of blogs to newsgathering and public commentary, and they don’t know where to begin to find the good ones. That this firey Greek is helping dead-tree consumers to find new outlets, then she’s doing her job right.

The shifting dynamic between those two forces is exactly like the relationship between Sarah Conner and the T101 in the “Terminator” movies. At first, the visitor from the future(digital) seemed intent on killing Sarah (print). But as the relationship progressed and the sequels unspooled, the Terminator became Sarah and her son’s one hope for salvation. Today, you can almost hear digital media (which for some reason has a thick Austrian accent) saying to print: “Come with me if you want to live!”

Am I the only one who finds that … funny?

Such is, ironically, the situation with David Westin, current president of ABC News. Now, my experience with corporate lawyers on one hand, and my experience in the newsroom on the other, and there’s just no way to make this math work.

Yet, somehow, by all current measures and standards for broadcast news, it does. A decade ago, Westin stepped into the presidency and has maintained healthy development of news programming over the years. As a newsman, he’s learned the business from some of the best; Peter Jennings, Charlie Gibson, Barbara Walters to name a few.

What struck me most about his talk today was his overall tone of contrition. On Iraq: “We blew it.” On build-up to war and WMD’s: “We blew it.” On election projections in 2000: “We blew it. Twice.” In general, when there is a perceived failure in reporting: “We blew it.”

And that’s where he wraps up all critical failures in the field. “Whith all the changes we see in the media, there’s a temptation to be distracted from reporting,” said Westin.

In many respects, this connects directly to Harwood’s discussion yesterday on the role of newspaper reporting in the media sphere. Where TV fails, newspapers pick up some of the slack. Unfortunately, distration from reporting is perceived to happen more and more often in network television.

“The real difference between doing right and doing wrong in journalism lies in how closely we are to covering the news,” he said.

And that, according to Westin, is the thrust of his leadership in the ABC newsroom.

Take the Virginia Tech shooting, for example. The news head says that Charlie Gibson was widely lauded with critical acclaim in the media for level-headed and balanced coverage, not catering to the sensational, to the maudlin, to coverage designed to pull heartstrings. Instead, he said, they stuck to facts, driving toward who the assailant was, how he was afflicted psychologically, and how the University was equipped to deal with such situations.

Westin is on the Internet bandwagon. “The Internet offers the possibility of greatly expanding our newsgathering capability,” he said.

Take the Tom Foley/Page story, for example. As it originally hit ABC, the story was not ready for prime time. They posted the brief on the Internet and within hour were flooded with tips from other pages saying that they were insulted ABC would post that Foley was simply “overly friendly.” The story built itself before their eyes thanks to those following on the net.

Westin’s position is that the Internet becomes a bellweather, an audition stage for stories to make it to the big screen. At the same time, he laments the in depth reporting that is afforded print journalists. To me, there’s a contradiction — and opportunity — in there somewhere.

Imagine an ABC that leveraged its considerable breadth of reach around the globe and used the website as less of a test-bed and more of a place of reportage. This morning’s lead stories on ABCNews.com? Killer rains, Iraq, and John Edwards and his wife in a street fight with Ann Coulter.

ABCNews.com stories demonstrate what all three major network websites offer: TV reporters writing snack stories not fit for broadcast. Let’s see what happens when these sites become true journalistic assets. Oh, and don’t forget the iPhone.

Two more points stuck out for me. The first was the more obvious ethical issue: when is the reportage coming out of Iraq no longer worth the personal sacrifice we’re asking our journalists to make there? His take: when the value of the reporting is no longer worth the risk involved, they’ll pull out of Iraq. Note, according to Westin: “We’re not there yet.”

The second point I found interesting has nothing to do with the war, the news, or reporting at all. During the Q&A, an audience member asked if being in the Disney stable posed ethical questions for Westin in leading a news organization.

The advantages, he says, are significant.

When 9/11 happened, we went on the air obviously commercial-free, but we went on the air for about four-and-a-half days straight, 24 hours a day, and we preempted everything on the network. We commissioned millions of dollars in expenses immediately without ever calling anybody, and the only thing I ever heard from Disney was, “How can we help you?”

So, there’s the issue of resources. Clearly, had they been a stand-alone news organization without the rich uncle, things would have been different. But what about editorial sanctity?

People think I get calls all the time from our corporate headquarters saying, “Cover that story;”"Don’t cover the story.” That never happens. Now that’s because they’re really good people or maybe it’s because they know that, if that ever did happen, it would be an explosion. There’d be a huge scandal. But I can tell you, that doesn’t happen.

OK, so Disney pays the bills, and they don’t question or influence your editorial process. It’s a match made in heaven, right?

The problem is a different problem. We are about a $600 million business, in terms of our costs every year. Compared to the Walt Disney Company, that’s almost miniscule. And as a reult, this is not like the Sulzbergers owning a newspaper, or the Grahams owning a newspaper, where the news organization is at the center, the core of what drives the company and what they care about. This good news is they leave us alone. The bad news is the CEO of the compnay has a lot more important things to do…”

I’ll be damned if I can find just how many people visit Disney parks each month. But here’s a loose point of comparison. Since opening in 1967, approximately 500 million people have seen the Pirates of the Carribbean exhibit. How many people does the ABC News organization reach each month? 200 million.

Historically, Harwood contends that this calcification in the party systems stems from Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the Voting Rights act in 1964. The dems became the pro-civil rights party and the republicans the anti-civil rights party. From then on out, you knew what you were getting. If you wanted smaller governement, fewer services, larger civil defense, and focus on waning deterioration of social values, you were a republican. If you favored increased federal services and gun control, enironmental protection, and abortion rights, you’re a democrat.Does Harwood have his real hair? Yes, he says, demonstrating his answer to what may be the most important political question of the morning.

Decline of the political party system? Hardly, he says. We’re just on the cusp of a new party system.

The new one hasn’t ended the parties; it’s changed the way people think and understand them, and I think they’ve actually emerged stronger, because people know what they’re voting for.

Do they really? There’s some data to support it, at least to support the assertion that when it counts, the public steps up to the plate. In 2000, only 105 million people voted. In 2004, that number went up to 122 million, largely attributed to strong sentiment one way or the other toward the Iraq war.

And yet, in spite of this solidification in the party system as Harwood proports, the American public is becoming less and less easy to pin down on some more traditionally divisive social issues. According to a recent study by the Pew Foundation, we the people skew right on gay marriage and gay adoption, left on embryonic stem cell research, and straight down the middle on abortion. We’re not moving further apart, we’re moving closer to center, according to the study.

Harwood is on the community line in this speech. I’m hard-pressed to find a scholar of media that doesn’t support the assertion that the search for viewers and increased circulation drives desperation reportage across news outlets; a drive to cover sensational and salacious that trumps – intentionally or otherwise – reporting stories to their conclusion. Dare we bring up Duke LaCrosse?

On the other side of the fence, political pundits are better now than ever at taking control of the conversation, themselves trumping newsgathering with talking points and spin.

But I’m not convinced Harwood made a clear and compelling connection that the media is complicit in the on-going bifurcation in the party system. Instead, I’d submit that media is reporting less adeptly on social issues, taking the easy — and cheap — out on hard reporting decisions, and the result is the appearance of a media role in goosing outrage and salaciousness for fun and profit. That the parties are better at this game than the media doesn’t make it news.A bit off topic, he brought up one of the best points of his speech in the Q&A.

Q: Let’s focus on newspapers for a second. One question has to do with what is the consequence of the reducation of newspapers, the reduction of staff, on journalism, and is there a ripple affect of reducing commitment in journalism in newspapers that will then have a consequence in the overall delivery in news beyond newspapers?

Harwood: That’s a very smart question, and it’s absolutely true for this reason. The most important piece in television news everyday is what’s in newspapers. One of the interesting things that I’ve noticied going from, you know, people you keep their foot in both camps: Television people don’t have a lot of self confidence about their own judgement.

This is the paper of record connundrum. I fully contend that much of the market for broadcast doesn’t consider their medium as important as traditional print news. This fuels the more symbiotic relationship between print and broadcast: news begins in the papers, is supplemented the next day in pictures, and is investigated to conclusion in print. The rise in cable outlets and their 24-hour coverage has had some affect on the practical application of this relationship, but it’s certainly there. Fewer reporters trained in print newsgathering will most certainly have a negative affect on quality and quantity of reportage.

I had the opportunity to meet Harwood after his talk. Turns out, he’s joining the online discussion and starting a blog this week through his role as a political reporter with CNBC. He stopped short of supporting the assertion that the rise of citizen media fueled by David Gilmor and his ilk was leading to a new middle-media. I told him I thought it was great, his journey into the blogosphere, and welcomed him. Where could we find him online?

He couldn’t remember the URL.Tomorrow, David Westin, President of ABC News.

In The Big Donor Show, which is set to air this Friday, a terminally ill cancer patient will select one of three patients to receive her kidneys.

Viewers will watch testimonials from the three Dutch contestants, aged between 18 and 40, and send in text message advice to the donor to help her decide who should receive the lifesaving operation.

In a massive surprise to the broadcaster, officials haven’t thrown universal support around the concept. Some in the industry say it’s because the losers actually die. Luckily, it’s a hoax (thanks Curt!). From Reuters:

A Dutch reality show in which a supposedly dying woman had to pick one of three contestants to receive her kidneys was revealed as a hoax on Friday.

Identified only as "Lisa", the 37-year-old woman turned out to be a healthy actress but the three candidates were genuine kidney patients, details the show’s producers revealed in the last minutes of the "The Big Donorshow".

Of note: The show aired. That it turns out the donor was an actress doesn’t save the fact that this thing made it to TV in the first place.