News Links

Jack Shafer profiles Bloomberg and lambasts newspapers: "As mature and graying industries, newspapers are mortified by the creative destruction of changing markets, so they take only tiny and confused steps—mostly backwards." Shafer appears to be suggesting that Bloomberg is the future of journalism or at least a significant part of it.

On a fairly unrelated note, the Washington Post has added the ability for people to comment on every story on its Web site, including opinion pieces. It's still a little rough around the edges, but pretty cool nonetheless. Here's the comments on a Krauthammer column.

Killing Trees

New media maven Jason Calcanis has a question: "Is it wrong to subscribe to the print edition of the New York Times if I have high-speed web access all day long?"

This is something that lots of newspaper readers are thinking about lately, I'd guess. And it puts newspapers in the uncomfortable position of creating a product that people feel bad about buying -- not a good business model. Should newspaper companies try to make people feel better about buying papers? How would they do that? Or should they just kill off (or massively scale back) print as some expect will happen within a decade or so?

Where Do We Go From Here?

There's a very good article in The Economist this week about the newspaper industry and how the paid print part of it is slowly decaying. In its typically well-considered, even-handed way, The Economist cuts through the hysteria that seems to so often accompany this topic and looks at dozens of examples from around the globe to see what newspapers are doing to try to evolve. Interestingly it goes well beyond just having a Web site. Different papers have taken different approaches to providing content online, while others have embraced free dailies (as we've seen here in the US), and others have started or bought online properties that are only peripherally related to journalism.

Any thoughts on which opportunities seem most promising for the newspaper business? It's a pretty exciting time to be in the business even though many journalists prefer the doom and gloom scenario.

Also, not sure how long this article we be available online, so read it now or print it out.

CNN's approach to citizen journalism

Courtesy an email from the Medill listserv and speaking of "citizen journalism", check out CNN's new site: CNN Exchange.

From what I can tell, they are soliciting readers for pictures and stories. They lay it out to make it easy for people to contribute and even include a toolkit to guide you.

They also include a list of stories the editors are interested in, from airport security ("Did you have to rearrange your luggage?") to the Middle East ("Do you have photos of buildings destroyed by rockets?") to the hurricane season ("How safe do you feel?")

First let me say that I think it's interesting, and an affective way to connect to readers and viewers. If citizen journalism is really taking off, then it makes sense for the news organizations to go out and solicit it from people and reap the benefits with a good looking online package.

And it seems like they are getting a really strong response with dozens of first-hand stories, photos and videos, allowing us to see parts of the world or particular incidents that might not otherwise be captured.

But something about it rubs me the wrong way. I haven't entirely put my finger on what it is - perhaps that it feels like they are taking the reporters out of the mix and the analysis is decidedly lacking. Perhaps it's that many of the contributions read like guided letters to the editor or people just mouthing off on a particular topic. Not sure, jury's still out. But it is an interesting approach, I'll give them that.

Thoughts?

Citizen journalism vs. Traditional media

There's an interesting story in this week's New Yorker about "citizen journalism."

Nicholas Lemann basically defends traditional media from what he boils down to puffed-up rhetoric about the threat of bloggers and online "journalism without journalists."

(He defines citizen journalism as Web sites that publish contributions by people who don't have jobs in news organizations but are performing similar jobs. He also sites a Pew study that showed that there are 12 million bloggers in the U.S., 34 percent of whom consider blogging to be a form of journalism. That would mean, Lemann points out, that there are now 4 million new journalists so the profession must have increased thousand-fold in no time.)

In looking at the affect of citizen journalism and bloggers (which I think are distinct, but he seems to lump them together here), he took a historical approach, siting how traditional media have been challenged in the past. In the end, the result has always been a more balanced approach to news-gathering.

Such is his argument about what many are seeing as a threat to journalism as we know it. He noted that it serves a purpose - compiling several news sources into a single spot, providing details and anecdotes from the scene (i.e. all the Internet accounts from New Orleans during Katrina), and of course a forum for opinion and debate. But it's still the more traditional journalists that are publishing the day to day accurate accounts of world events.

He contends that journalists still have a place here (phew!).

"The Internet is not unfriendly to reporting; potentially it is the best reporting medium ever invented. ... To keep pushing in that direction, though, requires that we hold up original reporting as a virtue and use the Internet to find new ways of presenting fresh material - which, inescapably, will wind up being produced by people who do that full time, not "citizens" with day jobs.

For the most part, I agree with Lemann, but caution that he is shaking off the affect of bloggers and citizen journalism on traditional media. OK, so there is a place for reporters, but we can't so quickly dismiss how much blogs and people taking the role of reporters has forced media to reexamine itself. And that reexamination is necessary, and should continue. The new media should push the status quo, so that tradition media doesn't, for example, kowtow to the government or get lazy or just gray and fizzle out.

Anyway, my book report aside, I thought it was story worth reading.

In a somewhat related idea, I cover a local county for the my newspaper, and it turns out there are four blogs dedicated to this county. From the upcoming elections, to zoning issues to wildlife-spotting, this group of bloggers is interested in all things County. I thought it to be kind of strange that someone would care enough to write about what they are reading in the news, their opinions, and generally what they are seeing in their day to day live in suburban Maryland. But I do go to the blogs often to see what people are talking about and what I might be missing.

Training backpack journalists

A good friend of mine is starting the Masters program at Medill this fall, and I've been advising him through the process. The other day he wrote me an email about some items that the school is asking them to pick up before they start classes. Here's what he wrote:

I received a ridiculous letter with my acceptance package that says I need to buy an IBM laptop (or a new Mac with a bigger screen), a ton of software, a video camera and a video iPod.

He was somewhat incredulous about the list -- he's on the print track, mind you -- mostly because of the cost, which is daunting. I looked around the Medill Web site and didn't see anything about this, but I suspect it has something to do with the complete overhaul of the program that seams to have taken place since we left.

On the one hand, with that kind of gear, it sounds like they'll get to do some pretty cool hands-on stuff that we never got to do. If they're breaking down the barriers between print, magazine, new media, and broadcast, I'd say that makes a lot of sense too, since it seems like we'll be a lot less pigeonholed by those classifications than the previous generation of journalists was. It also reminds me of the slide from Rich Gordon's new media presentation about the "backpack journalist" who can operate as a print/broadcast/new media journalist using the equipment he carries with him. I suppose that as long as these skills are marketable, it's a good thing.

Another thing. Hearing about all these changes makes me realize that we had the bad luck (or maybe the good fortune) to go to grad school at the last possible point when a "classic" old-school journalism education was available, but maybe we got the best of both worlds in straddling the old and the new.

This is the deal

Every once in a while, someone who I went to grad school with sends out an email to a group of folks, usually sending along a link to a journalism-related story or sometimes one he or she wrote for the paper. Then commences a string of back and forth replies (it once reached 115), that usually still involves the original topic, but often digresses into a litany of random thoughts.

A recent one was when CK sent out a link to a Philadelphia Inquirer column about the necessary absurdity of covering the heat. She had written a similar story, as had several in the email chain, and a conversation ensued about how many of us had been writing these ridiculous breaking-news-it's-hot-outside stories.

In my first job out of college, I covered cops and fire for a small daily paper in a county with few crimes or fires. On really hot days - or really cold days, or days with a lot of snow, or after a major rainstorm - my editor would walk out of his office, with his arm crossed and a pensive frown on his face. He'd scan the newsroom (which was puny at four news reporters and an intern), looking for who would write the weather story. We knew it. We knew the look. I would quickly grab the phone receiver and begin talking to the dial tone, as if I was tracking down a hot tip. The government reporter would run to the bathroom; the education reporter always seemed to be strangely missing, and I think he was literally hiding under his desk. Whoever had to do the story would inevitably whine something along the lines of "But I did it last time after that strange storm."

I guess writing these kind of stories - whether about the heat or some other topic that makes you question your career choice - is all part of the job. And while not all of us are covering the weather beat for daily papers, there's a common feeling of understanding among us and we definitely think we have something to say about it.

So that was the idea behind this blog. A handful of us decided to get together in a single forum to write about the exciting world of journalism and our own places in it. We are all at different publications and stages in our career, but share the interest in the business and all the fun and baggage that comes with it. Here we plan to share stories, anecdotes, thoughts, conversation and whatever else transpires. So welcome and enjoy.