I have set up a new blog here linked to my home page here. The new blog is called Fusion - a blending of journalism/technology/education and is part of a class requirement for my doctoral program at Pepperdine. See you there!
"With most editing, ad placement, layout, and design done on computers anyway, it's conceivable that the newsroom as it exists today could be eliminated, with folks working from home, their car, or even the local Starbucks."
-Editor and Publisher
A special report in the May 21 issue of Editor and Publisher details the trend among print journalists to spend more time outside the newsroom now that their tools of technology allow them to post multimedia content from wherever they can find a Wi Fi connection (including a local Starbucks).
The mojos - mobile journalists - are equipped with backpacks worth more than $14,000 (that's some expensive equipment!) of tech toys, which include laptops, video cameras and digital audio recorders. Some of the mojos even post directly to Web sites without editing.
This seems the print version of a TV news live shot. The immediacy is great but will accuracy, detail and depth get lost in the process (as they tend to do on TV)? One New York print reporter said his new mobility even allowed him to spot and do a story about an eight-foot statue of Paul Bunyan in someone's front yard.
Now there's some enterprise reporting - fit for cable.
Google has come up with an amazing way to search content BEFORE it is created!
What will they think of next? Give it a try!
I am trying to embrace the future. This blog, at least one of my classes, and what little free time I have these days are all centered around what seems to be the inevitable: journalism is going digital. Newspapers are losing pages and staff. It's no longer enough to tell a story through words and paper alone. (In fact, it's no longer enough to give a lecture through words and white board alone but that's another topic.)
So, I have my RSS feeds neatly arranged on my Yahoo home page and assure myself that I am staying just as well informed as I did during my newspaper subscription days (maybe even more so!!) because I receive instantly updated bits and bytes from news sources all over the world! Who needs smelly old papers piling up right next to the laundry and dishes, adding to my "to do" list?
But just as I never fully embraced news by soundbite, I am not yet ready to drive the convergence live truck over the grave of newspapers, recycled though they may be. I, a print person who wound up in TV anchor clothes, am now teaching my students to write shorter, less creative sentences. Use bullet points and subheads, I tell them. Don't write delayed leads!! The reader is scanning - not actually reading, you see. Take pictures, take video, get audio. Don't let the details stand in the way of a good multimedia production!!
So just when I've convinced myself that I'm good with all that and - since I'm now nearly literate in Photoshop and Dreamweaver, I must hold my nose and dive into HTML...along comes some psychology professor to burst my convergence bubble. Leave it to a psych major to bring us back to the sad reality of our pitiful lives. In an essay titled The Long Goodbye
Peggy Drexler opines about how much she'll miss newspapers when the presses fall silent:
I worry about the quality of debate. I worry about the truth. I worry about a community's ability to examine itself. I worry about the abuse of power when nobody is watching. I worry about losing the sheer enjoyment of great writing and reporting.
As I sat contemplating those words, a circulation rep from the San Diego Union Tribune called to beg me to come back. "We'll give you a $20 gas card," she told me, if I spent $19.95 on a new subscription. You do the math.
So, I took the deal. And I'm about to renew two other subscriptions, including the grandaddy of them all - the NY Times, even if their publisher doesn't care whether they stop the presses or not.
My friend and former co-anchor, Rob Hayes, who now makes his living at KABC-TV covering celebrity drunk driving trials, tells me that if newspapers die, "We're all in trouble." Not only do TV reporters rely on yesterday's papers as today's personal assignment editor, no one in broadcasting really believes that they are informing the electorate on anything relevant - like where candidates stand on the issues or other such frivolities.
But then again, I did read Dr. Drexler's column online in the San Francisco Examiner - a paper that would not normally appear on my radar. And I found it through my carefully chosen RSS feeds. And I am now choosing to respond by writing this blog, which I will then email to a number of my friends and colleagues - so we can all lament the good old days, the days before technology stole our time and our paper.
And P.S. - If I had already learned HTML, this post would look a whole lot prettier!
We've been speculating for the last few years that the Internet would eventually become the primary source for news among Americans. TV has been holding strong in all the polls until two days ago, when this We Media/Zogby Interactive Poll was released. It found that 48% of Americans get their news primarily from the Internet and 64% are "dissatisfied" with American journalism.
Of course, the news they are getting online does come primarily from those very media outlets with which they are dissatisfied. And the "interactive" poll was conducted online. Wouldn't that skew the results somewhat?
I tell my students that to be an effective blogger, you MUST post REGULARLY. Sadly, my last post was Nov. 17 - of last year.
I do have a good excuse. My mother died exactly one month after that post. But I notice that blogging is like exercising or keeping in touch with old friends: The longer you go without doing it, the more difficult it is to get back in the routine.
Having just spent a week in federal court as a juror on a criminal trial, I will pick up where I left off. I discovered that the feds have made it much easier for reporters to get access to court documents without leaving the comfort of their newsrooms. The PACER system (public access to court electronic records - it wouldn't be the federal government without an acronym) allows anyone to register and log in. You must supply a credit card number and pay eight cents a page to download documents. But what a great time saver! They also have fun stats and some good links.
I'm told the state courts - at least here in California - are trying to do something similar.
Many years ago, when I was anchoring in Boise, we were covering the federal murder trial of Randy Weaver, a white supremacist accused of killing a deputy marshal. Since cameras aren't allowed in federal court, we had to rely on our reporter to run as FAST as he could down two flights of stairs to our waiting live truck so we could be FIRST with the verdict.
Unfortunately, this reporter wasn't much of an athlete, so when I tossed to him live - he was huffing and puffing so hard that he couldn't utter a word. I had to fill time to keep him from passing out.
How things have changed. In a blog post for the Society of Professional Journalists, Witchita Eagle reporter Ron Sylvester outlines how he and a multimedia team covered a recent murder trial in Kansas. Sylvester describes how he used a smart phone and fold-up Bluetooth keyboard to deliver live updates to a copy editor, who would then send them directly to a special Web page set up for coverage of the trial.
The only copy that wasn't run through an editor first was the verdict. Sylvester sent instant messages through Yahoo! to post on the Web.
The team also produced audio slide shows of emotional testimony and used flash drives to download the prosecutor's Power Points - which included crime scene photos.
No Nikes needed for this coverage!
Last week, during my fussing about the lack of hyperlocal fire coverage for evacuees, I envisioned a solution to the problem many of us were having during our unplanned vacation. We wanted to be able to get fire news about our neighborhood online without searching for it.
Then I thought of an idea: What if you could click on one of these interactive fire maps and have that link take you directly to forums, blogs and news about your neighborhood?
As it turns out, someone else had already been thinking of that idea. On Nov. 1, Your Street was launched by a group of techies in - where else - San Francisco. It has amazing potential - if it catches on and residents actually contribute to the site.
But if nothing else, it serves as a great hyperlocal news aggregator. I clicked on my neighborhood and found out about a changed bus route. The scariest part - it linked me directly to my metro area before I even entered the information. Guess I'd better clean up those cookies!
Back in my days in TV news, the rule was not to acknowledge the competition, let alone direct viewers to them. But the Internet is changing that!
Al Tompkins of Poynteronline notes that the Web site of one of the TV stations in Madison, Wis., is actually linking to headlines from competing TV stations and newspapers in the region. WISC's site, Channel3000.com also features a cool map "Scanner" showing stories for each city in their viewing area.
In an interview, the managing editor of the station told Tompkins why they took this "bold step" to use their site as a news aggregator for the region. He said they wanted to make it an "easy place for people to get all the information they want to know about Madison." Users never leave WISC's site - the links open in pop-up windows.
As an evacuee last week, I would have loved this service! Even though I have my own RSS feeds set up of the San Diego media, this feature would have prevented a lot of hunting and pecking for local information.
Here's an interesting development from my former market in Southwest Florida.
Deborah Potter reports in her blog that staffers at the Naples Daily News were told last year they no longer work for a newspaper - they work for a dot.com. They see their site as a local wire service - knowing that when another hurricane threat comes, evacuees will be holed up in Orlando with their laptops, looking for information online.
That's what I was doing when I escaped the San Diego fires last week. I needed a one-stop shop for info that affected my neighborhood. Looks like they are set up to provide just that. And when those evacuees return, they're likely to be grateful and remain loyal to the "brand."
The Daily News, owned by E.W. Scripps Co. (HGTV, Food Network), has been a leader in multimedia content thanks to online guru Rob Curley, self-described "Internet Punk." He made his mark transforming medium-sized newspapers into hyperlocal multimedia machines on the Internet. The Washington Post Group grabbed him up after he successfully reinvented the Daily News.
I also noticed that the Daily News has nabbed a popular former TV weather personality. Jim Syoen didn't renew his contract with the NBC affiliate this year - but it looks like he's got a new gig blogging and doing interactive weather for the paper (which clearly isn't a paper anymore). You go Jim! Are tuba vlogs and podcasts next?
