Originally posted on OaklandLocal.com, 5/8.

Hours after Oakland Police Department Chief Howard Jordan’s sudden, unexpected announcement that he was stepping down, city officials remained silent about the cause of his departure.

But it follows on the heels of yet another damning report about endemic leadership problems inside the OPD. Last week, a federally appointed compliance director slammed the department for its tolerance of bad behavior by officers and urged the executive leadership to adopt practices that “have been employed by many police departments for nearly a generation.”

Mayor Jean Quan and City Administrator Deanna Santana would only say that he was on medical leave and will be taking a medical retirement. They also would not respond to speculation that OPD’s federal monitor or compliance director had a direct hand in Jordan leaving.

“I’m personally saddened and surprised,” Quan said. “I trust he’s doing what is best for himself and family.”

The city and police department are hampered by a 1994 federal law that protects the privacy of medical records. Jordan must give the city explicit permission about what they can reveal about his health.

Without that permission, Jordan’s method of leaving his post ensures that almost no information about his departure will ever be shared with the public.

An interim chief has not been named. Assistant Chief Anthony Toribio has been named acting chief and will be in charge of day to day operations. “This is no different from when the chief is on vacation,” he said.

Quan said the city would conduct a national search for a replacement. She confirmed that her office had been in contact with OPD’s compliance director and monitor — both of who she thinks may have a voice in who the city hires as its next chief.

Scott Selby, Greg Campbell

On February 15, 2003, a group of thieves broke into an allegedly airtight vault in the international diamond capital of Antwerp, Belgium and made off with over $108 million dollars worth of diamonds and other valuables. They did so without tripping an alarm or injuring a single guard in the process.

Although the crime was perfect, the getaway was not. The police zeroed in on a band of professional thieves fronted by Leonardo Notarbartolo, a dapper Italian who had rented an office in the Diamond Center and clandestinely cased its vault for over two years. The who of the crime had been answered, but the how remained largely a mystery.

Enter Scott Andrew Selby, a Harvard Law grad and diamond expert, and Greg Campbell, author of Blood Diamonds, who undertook a global goose chase to uncover the true story behind the daring heist. Tracking the threads of the story throughout Europe from Belgium to Italy, in seedy cafes and sleek diamond offices, the authors sorted through an array of conflicting details, divergent opinions and incongruous theories to put together the puzzle of what actually happened that Valentines Day weekend.

This real-life Ocean’s Eleven, a combination of diamond history, journalistic reportage, and riveting true-crime story, provides a thrilling in-depth study detailing the better-than-fiction heist of the century. Amazon

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts

Julian Rubinstein

Elmore Leonard meets Franz Kafka in the wild, improbably true story of the legendary outlaw of Budapest. Attila Ambrus was a gentleman thief, a sort of Cary Grant–if only Grant came from Transylvania, was a terrible professional hockey goalkeeper, and preferred women in leopard-skin hot pants. During the 1990s, while playing for the biggest hockey team in Budapest, Ambrus took up bank robbery to make ends meet. Arrayed against him was perhaps the most incompetent team of crime investigators the Eastern Bloc had ever seen: a robbery chief who had learned how to be a detective by watching dubbed Columbo episodes; a forensics man who wore top hat and tails on the job; and a driver so inept he was known only by a Hungarian word that translates to Mound of Ass-Head.

BALLAD OF THE WHISKEY ROBBER is the completely bizarre and hysterical story of the crime spree that made a nobody into a somebody, and told a forlorn nation that sometimes the brightest stars come from the blackest holes. Like The Professor and the Madman and The Orchid Thief, Julian Rubinsteins bizarre crime story is so odd and so wicked that it is completely irresistible. Amazon

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

Allison Hoover Bartlett

Unrepentant book thief John Charles Gilkey has stolen a fortune in rare books from around the country. Yet unlike most thieves who steal for profit, Gilkey steals for love-the love of books. Perhaps equally obsessive is Ken Sanders, the self-appointed “bibliodick” who’s driven to catch him. Following this eccentric cat-and-mouse chase with a mixture of suspense, insight and humor, Allison Hoover Bartlett plunges the reader deep into a rich world of fanatical book lust and considers what it is that makes some people stop at nothing to posses the titles they love. Amazon

Honor Thy Father

Gay Talese

On New York’s Park Avenue on a rainy Tuesday night in October 1964, the famous Mafia chieftain Joseph Bonanno was kidnapped by two mobsters and reported by the police as dead on the following morning. More than a year later, Bonanno mysteriously reappeared, setting off a bloody mob feud that came to be known as the “Banana War.”

In this monumental work—packed with intimate details and brilliant reporting—bestselling author Gay Talese first brought to the American consciousness a world and a life previously known to only a few. No other book has done more to acquaint readers with the secrets, structure, wars, power plays, family lives, and fascinating, frightening personalities of the Mafia. Amazon

Godfathers: Inside Northern Ireland’s Drug Racket

Jim McDowell

‘Godfathers’ is the story of the Northern Ireland drugs trade. It names the names and tells the stories of the dealers and their enemies. Dealers like Brendan ‘Speedy’ Fegan and Brendan ‘Bap’ Campbell, two of the brashest, highest-living, most cavalier young gangsters in Belfast. They loved the high life, the flash cars, the wads of money, the champagne lifestyle, the wild women. They both ended up on a pathologist’s slab, gunned down by the paramilitaries.

But ‘Godfathers’ also reveals that the paramilitaries are in the drugs trade too. We meet Ulster’s porn queen who was the live-in lover of a UVF commander of North Belfast: she too graduated to the drugs trade. We meet the hard men who drive the trade. We look at the huge drugs problem in Ian Paisley’s constituency. We look at the links between the UVF, the late Billy Wright and the late Martin Cahill ‘The General’. King Rat and The General were in business together. McDowell reveals how the UDA and UVF are into drugs in a big way. He reveals that the Provisional IRA, despite their campaign against many dealers, have been prepared to bankroll major drugs operations in return for protection money. ‘Godfathers’ gives you the story from the streets. Amazon

True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa

Michael Finkel

On February 2002, New York Times Magazine writer Michael Finkel received a startling piece of news: a young man named Christian Longo, wanted for killing his entire family, had been captured in Mexico, where he’d taken on a new identity: Michael Finkel of the New York Times.

The next day, on page A-3 of the Times, came another troubling item: a note from the editors explaining that Finkel, having falsified parts of an investigative article, had been fired. Nonetheless, the only journalist Longo would speak with was the real Michael Finkel, and so Finkel placed a call to Oregon’s Lincoln County jail, intent on getting the true story. So began a bizarre and intense relationship—a reporting job that morphed into a shrewd game of cat-and-mouse. Part mystery, part memoir, part mea culpa, True Story weaves a spellbinding tale of murder, love, and deceit with a deeply personal inquiry into the slippery nature of truth. Amazon

The Night of the Gun: A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life. His own.

David Carr

The instant New York Times bestseller now in trade paperback: a “compelling tale of drug abuse, despair, and, finally, hope” (Chicago Sun-Times).

Critical and commercial phenomenon: The Night of the Gun hit bestseller lists thanks to a national tour and rave reviews from every major newspaper in the country. “Imagine James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces on a dose of truth serum, suffuse it with some cynical humor and a good handful of self-depreca- tion, and you get David Carr’s remarkable and immensely readable memoir,” wrote the New York Post. People magazine gave it three stars, saying “The Night of the Gun is an odyssey you’ll find hard to forget.”

Lacerating honesty, scrupulous reporting: Many memoirists of dysfunction, addiction, and recovery have told incredible stories— what distinguishes Carr is his credibility. Entertainment Weekly wrote, “Carr is an undeniably brilliant and dogged journalist, and he’s written an unforgettable memoir.” Amazon

Among the Thugs

Bill Buford

They have names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin’ Sammy. They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England’s soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson. Amazon

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

Allison Hoover Bartlett

Unrepentant book thief John Charles Gilkey has stolen a fortune in rare books from around the country. Yet unlike most thieves who steal for profit, Gilkey steals for love-the love of books. Perhaps equally obsessive is Ken Sanders, the self-appointed “bibliodick” who’s driven to catch him. Following this eccentric cat-and-mouse chase with a mixture of suspense, insight and humor, Allison Hoover Bartlett plunges the reader deep into a rich world of fanatical book lust and considers what it is that makes some people stop at nothing to posses the titles they love. Amazon

Shell Games: A True Story of Cops, Con Men, and the Smuggling of America’s Strangest Wildlife

Craig Welch

In Shell Games, journalist Craig Welch delves into our nation’s waters and wildlands in search of America’s most unusual criminals. The resulting detective story is filled with butterfly thieves, bear poachers, shark-trafficking pastors—and a rogues’ gallery of double-crossing crooks who get rich smuggling bizarre marine creatures.

Puget Sound is home to the geoduck (pronounced “gooey duck”), the world’s largest burrowing clam—a seafood delicacy worth millions on the international black market. Outlaw scuba divers pursue this prize while dodging cops, committing arson, and hiring hit men to eliminate their rivals. Detective Ed Volz has spent decades chasing fish and wildlife smugglers. Now, he and a team of federal agents are desperate to take down the most remarkable thief they’ve ever hunted: a darkly charming con man who works both sides of the law and calls himself the “Geoduck Gotti.” Amazon

The Informant: A True Story

Kurt Eichenwald

From an award-winning New York Times investigative reporter comes an outrageous story of greed, corruption, and conspiracy—which left the FBI and Justice Department counting on the cooperation of one man . . .

It was one of the FBI’s biggest secrets: a senior executive with America’s most politically powerful corporation, Archer Daniels Midland, had become a confidential government witness, secretly recording a vast criminal conspiracy spanning five continents. Mark Whitacre, the promising golden boy of ADM, had put his career and family at risk to wear a wire and deceive his friends and colleagues. Using Whitacre and a small team of agents to tap into the secrets at ADM, the FBI discovered the company’s scheme to steal millions of dollars from its own customers.

But as the FBI and federal prosecutors closed in on ADM, using stakeouts, wiretaps, and secret recordings of illegal meetings around the world, they suddenly found that everything was not all that it appeared. At the same time Whitacre was cooperating with the Feds while playing the role of loyal company man, he had his own agenda he kept hidden from everyone around him—his wife, his lawyer, even the FBI agents who had come to trust him with the case they had put their careers on the line for. Whitacre became sucked into his own world of James Bond antics, imperiling the criminal case and creating a web of deceit that left the FBI and prosecutors uncertain where the lies stopped and the truth began.

In this gripping account unfolds one of the most captivating and bizarre tales in the history of the FBI and corporate America. Meticulously researched and richly told by New York Times senior writer Kurt Eichenwald, The Informant re-creates the drama of the story, beginning with the secret recordings, stakeouts, and interviews with suspects and witnesses to the power struggles within ADM and its board—including the high-profile chairman Dwayne Andreas, F. Ross Johnson, and Brian Mulroney—to the big-gun Washington lawyers hired by ADM and on up through the ranks of the Justice Department to FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno. Amazon

Hell’s Angels

Hunter S. Thompson

‘A phalanx of motorcycles cam roaring over the hill from the west …the noise was like a landslide, or a wing of bombers passing over. Even knowing the Angels I couldn’t quite handle what I was seeing.’ Huge bikes, filthy denim and an aura of barely contained violence; the Hell’s Angels could paralyse whole towns with fear, so terrible was their reputation. But how much of that reputation was myth and how much was brutal reality? Only one man could discover the truth about these latter-day barbarians; Hunter Stockton Thompson, Dr Gonzo himself, the man who saw the fear and loathing in the heart of the American dream. This counter-culture classic is the hair-raising result. Amazon

All descriptions via Amazon.

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Tech Press Critique 004

• Live Blogging—Digital Journalism’s Pivotal Platform?
• The Hill.com: Twitter Room
• Poynter: Fake press release exposes real problems in online news distribution
• TechCrunch: Google Acquires U.S. National High-Traffic Broadband Wi-Fi Provider ICOA Inc. For $400M [Update: Nope] TechCrunch has taken the story down
• TechCrunch: PRWeb Releases Press Release About Its Fake Press Release, But The Circle Of Trust Is Already Broken
• TechCrunch: Churn: The Problem Of The New Tech Journalism
• Columbia Journalism Review: Pass the #popcorn ICYMI: TechCrunch errs, other tech writers pile on

Photo: Library of Congress

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Tech Press Critique #003

Tech Press Critique #002

Today’s episode: 623 Tweets About An Embargo? TechCrunch’s Ryan Lawler explains what he was trying to say about embargoes last month when he pissed off the Internet. With music by Bobby McElver.

Tech Press Critique

On today’s show:

• Exclusive: Startup Launch Ruined By Broken Embargo (Originally titled: Exclusive: Startup Launch Ruined By Careless Blogger)
• Exclusive: Area Blogger Wishes He Had Done Some Things Differently
• Death To The Embargo

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After two and a half years, two conferences, eight social hour presentations, and almost a hundred job listings on the job board, it’s time for Digital Journalism Portland to come to an end. I want to deeply thank the hundreds of people who attended the events, who were a part of the online community and who helped make one of Portland’s first independent journalism organizations a reality.

The site will remain up as an archive for the conference resources (2009, 2011), but as of Jan. 1, Digital Journalism Portland is closing down.

Why Shut It Down?

Back in early 2009 we called ourselves “digital journalists” because we approached our work differently than the rest of the media world. I don’t think anyone sitting in the audience at the first Digital Journalism Camp would have guessed that two years later The Oregonian was going to partner with multiple local news blogs — the majority of which didn’t even exist at the time.

At the time there weren’t a lot of local resources for us and I wanted Digital Journalism Portland to fill that void. These days the name “digital journalist” still fits, but a lot has changed. Traditional news organizations no longer (for the most part) treat the online world as an anathema; bloggers who report on and break news are everywhere. In Portland and Vancouver we’ve seen multiple local media ventures launch, some successfully, others not so much.

Digital Journalism Portland is now one of many resources that exist both locally and online for digital journalists — a.k.a., pretty much all journalists.

Several months ago a handful of journalists began working to create a local chapter of the Online News Association. This last week they announced their first meetup: Jan. 18 at the U of O’s Turnbull Center.

I’m happy that I can contribute something to that effort. As of Jan. 4, the Portland ONA chapter will take over the @journopdx Twitter account. DJP and ONA share an almost identical mission: to be a resource for new media journalists. The conversation that ONA will have on Twitter is very similar to what Digital Journalism Portland did. If you disagree with this handover, please let me know.

Hacks/Hackers

Digital Journalism Portland was the beginning. ONA has now stepped up. But we also need a resource for those who work at the intersection of journalism and technology. Back in 2009, several journalists in New York and California founded a group called Hacks/Hackers. Their mission is to “create a network of journalists (“hacks”) and technologists (“hackers”) who rethink the future of news and information.”

Journalists sometimes call themselves “hacks,” a tongue-in-cheek term for someone who can churn out words in any situation. Hackers use the digital equivalent of duct tape to whip out code. Hacks/Hackers tries to bridge those two worlds. It’s for hackers exploring technologies to filter, visualize and distribute information, and for hacks who use technology to find and tell stories. Hacks/Hackers is a digital community of people who seek to inspire each other, share information (and code) and collaborate to invent the future of media and journalism.

There are now chapters of Hack/Hackers around the globe. If you’re interested in helping organize a local chapter, please get in touch. Multiple co-organizers are needed.

Thank You a Million Times Over

I can’t begin to thank the countless people who have been involved over the years. The social hours wouldn’t have happened without the initial co-host Libby Tucker, and wouldn’t have continued without the support — and prodding — of people like Betsy Richter, Michael Andersen and Cornelius Swart.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Al Stavitsky, the outgoing director of the University of Oregon’s Turnbull Center, and Tim Gleason, dean of the school’s journalism department. Al was one of the first potential sponsors I approached in 2009. Even though I had no experience organizing conferences he agreed to cater lunch for the event. That sponsorship was the critical cornerstone that allowed me to convince other sponsors to come on board — which then allowed the event to take place. If not for Al and Tim, DJP would likely have not have existed in its current form.

There are so many others to thank: the 40-plus conference panelists and presenters, the sponsors, the social hour presenters and regulars, and all of the people like Scott Nelson who were an advocate for DJP behind the scenes. I’m remarkably lucky to have a supportive and encouraging partner like Devon D’Ewart, who, among many other things, organized volunteers at both conferences. I wish there was a way to list everyone who helped along the way. Thank you all.

One Last Thing

Over the last two years people often offered suggestions for specific social hour topics or conference sessions. Starting at the beginning of 2011, the requests I got for training for social media and online tools increased dramatically. I’ve always been confused by that. There are a ton of places to find that kind of information online, but for some reason that connection is not happening for a lot of journalists.

If you want to do something to help journalism in Portland or elsewhere, find out why so many journalists don’t feel like they’re able to discover, utilize and adopt the many tools available online. Social hours are fun, conferences about big-picture ideas are edifying, but there is a real need for new media journalism training.

It’s been an amazing ride. I hope I see you at an ONA event or a Hacks/Hackers demo day or some other conference or workshop that someone is dreaming up right now.

Thank you all,
Abraham

Housekeeping:

1. As I mentioned, the new Portland chapter of ONA will take over the @journopdx Twitter account on Jan. 4. Email me with questions or comments.
2. After sending out a final announcement, the email addresses in the Digital Journalism Portland mailing list will be deleted.
3. All journopdx.com email addresses will be deleted on Jan. 1 along with the DJP Facebook page.
4. The website will remain online in its current state for the foreseeable future. I host the site and the bandwidth demands are very minimal. Barring some unforeseen issue, I will leave the site up indefinitely.

Become an omnivore

This isn’t a new idea. New York Times staffer Nate Silver gives the same advice to new journalists. But how can you possibly add more to the firehose of information you’re faced with every day? That’s not a problem with information overload, says Clay Shirky, “It’s filter failure.” Find your filters and you’ll be able expand your focus and discover trends and ideas developing outside of your sphere.

[Johnson said,] “Steve Jobs hired people not only trained in technology but in humanities and graphic design. And he let the folks who came in with other perspectives have as much say in product development meetings as the programmers and engineers. If there was poetry in things Apple produced, it was because they have actual poets in the company.”

Show And Tell

Brainstorm happens when we’re coming up with headline ideas, with story ideas. It happens when we’re planning how we’ll cover something. But it rarely happens when there’s not a specific goal. That’s a lost opportunity. There needs to be time for unstructured brainstorming, said Johnson, but only a few companies allow it to happen.

He’s a proponent of a concept used by design company Ideo Labs, in Palo Alto, Calif., which has developed a number of cutting-edge products, including the first mouse for Apple computers. Owners Tom and David Kelly bring their managers together for 20 minutes every Monday for what they call “show and tell.” The managers talk about things that grabbed their attention: “My seven-year-old just loves this crazy new toy” or “I saw an art installation that was amazing.”

The free-wheeling session clues in people to new ideas “and it’s been a great generator of innovation for the company,” Mr. Johnson said.

Promote pollination

Like a bee who brings the pollen around, a key role of a leader today is to be a pollinator, a person who talks to the engineering people and then talks with the marketing people and then the finance group. It’s important to not only know what everyone is doing but also to encourage people to link up. “The leader can say: Bob, it might be a good idea to talk to Bill because the two of you are facing similar challenges and what he’s finding might be relevant to what you’re doing.”

Or to take Maureen Dowd out of context: “As in Darwinian evolution, cross-pollination with diverse strains promotes species development.”

Photo by michelini

This week the Audit Bureau of Circulation, which audits the vast majority of US newspapers, released its data for the last six months. The numbers were, surprise surprise, down. Stocks for the major companies promptly took a hit. But there were glimmers of hope in those figures, too. Check out PaidContent’s post on the increase in digital editions and Jeff Bercovici’s look at how surprisingly dull that increase is.

In non-dull surprising news, one fifth of FT.com’s traffic comes from mobile devices. The Economist also grabs a spot on this week’s list with an insightful look at how tablets are no panacea, as does Frédéric Filloux, who asks why the hell there are so many crappy looking ads out there.

1. Fas-Fax: Major Newspapers’ Total Digital Editions Rise 63 Percent – paidContent
   
2. More Proof That Paywalls Work From…Newsday?
3. Your digital paper, sir: The struggle to make money out of news on tablets
4. Fifth of FT.com traffic coming from mobile devices
5. News website design is plagued by too many ads: The rise of the mobile web could mean better-looking sites – smaller screens can attract fewer, higher-value ads – Frédéric Filloux

Photo by sh0dan

The future of online news video hit me for the first time in mid 2009 when I was talking to the editor of a small daily in Northern California. He was telling me how the paper had bought high-end video cameras, trained photographers to use editing software and put together beautiful video packages.

But that’s not what visitors seemed to care about. What did they click on the most? The raw, unedited footage from car accidents and local events that reporters shot and uploaded to the Web while in the field.

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Not much has changed since then for a lot of small and mid-size newspapers. The future of online news video looks like it was shot on a camera phone.

That’s obviously not true for the big guys, The New York Times, et al. And if you don’t have NYT-style resources there are apps and tools that make creating OK-looking video easy and cheap. And I should add that low-quality production doesn’t mean the content is without value.

But the drift towards low-quality video is an inarguable and inescapable trend, one that stems from the basic principle of supply and demand.

In an old post on (the sadly defunct) Rebuilding Media, Vin Crosbie writes that an overabundance of news sources leads to competition that actually lowers the bar on the definition of “quality” video.

When there were few suppliers, they used higher quality content (i.e., ‘high production values’) as a competitive weapon against each other. But now that there is an overabundance of suppliers, their competition levers towards being the first to produce content that is at least of acceptable quality. Millions of videos are viewed billions of times each month on sites such as YouTube.com (+3 billion per month) not because of high production values, but because the videos are at least ‘good enough’ to watch.

So What Role Does Video Play? Advertorials, Really?

From a financial perspective, cost-intensive video production faces a big hurdle. The rate that advertisers will pay for video views is relatively low. Let’s look a non-news-media example: Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

Earlier this month paidContent reported that Marthastewart.com’s July traffic was up 7% to 2.6 million uniques but video views dropped 14% to 382,000. Like the rest of the media world, MSLO’s advertisers aren’t paying much for those views. So Martha ditched the editorially driven video strategy and teamed up with Frigidiare for some good old advertorial content.

Halfway through the paidContent story is a pretty depressing sentence:

As media companies look to refine their video strategies, it might make more sense to go with the custom video as MSLO is doing and wait until CPMs, along with marketer and viewer interest in supporting original, non-advertorial content emerges.

What this really means for small print news orgs is that there is no immediate future in investing in quality news video. That includes small online-only news orgs like the one I work for. If editorially independent news video can’t support itself, either through advertising or other revenue models, then it can’t be done.

There’s hope on the horizon. According to eMarketer, by 2015 US online video advertising will double in size to $2.16 billion.

Get ready for four more years of camera phone video clips.

Flickr CC-licensed photo by JcOlivera.com