Yada recently posted a great blog giving tips for journalism students.

It includes learning to network, meeting deadlines, social networking and so forth.

The first part is called Resolutions for journalism students, part I: Become invaluable

Part II: Resolutions for journalism students, part II: Network like mad

Recently I went to yet another hyperbolic panel discussions on internet journalism. The CEO of Slate.com Jacob Weisberg spoke in triumphant tones of how the time for coexistence between print and online was over now that the internet guys had bigger “armies”. It sounded a bit like a declaration of war from some newly empowered ethnic nationalist movement whose glee over a fresh shipment of arms stripped away any facade of caution or diplomacy. This guy was ready to march on Rome and he didn’t mind saying so.

Some of his hot air was sucked out when an audience member asked him, “Is Slate.com profitable?”

His enfeebled response drifted from something about lawyers to an awkward silence.

And that is the point – behind all the rhetoric and triumphalism it is very hard to think of any free ad-based content that has proven profitable. Google – the king maker of adbased revenue – has not been able to monetize there  most user-centric web 2.0, journalism for the people, ethno-everything magic tool: youtube.

And folks if Google can’t create big ad based profits on user generated content that ought to be telling us something.

The theory is that people are unwilling to pay for content now that anyone can publish stuff online. There is no scarcity, according to this reasoning and people will not pay for something that is not scarce. You or I can put up a movie review according to this argument and it can compete with the best.

This is wrong.

Scarcity of news is actually increasing not decreasing. Its true that anyone can publish online for free – and there are certainly more opinion makers than ever before – but that does not mean that you can do reporting for free and we actually are seeing a shrinking core of new coverage.

The media adopted a false economy online. When one newspaper decided to offer free ad-based content  they all had to jump in or face being left behind. For awhile the public adapted to this free, unsustainable model and the newspapers and magazines – bloated from decades of plenty – could afford to try out this new idea of giving it all away. It failed.

Ad revenues were never able to deliver up the goods. All the sources of news that we have relied on for decades are going under. And they are not being replaced. A million  opinion writers blogging on a million other opinion writers cannot fulfill the one vital function of journalism: to gather news.

We have  gotten into thinking that this is a service we can get for free because we jumped on board with the news media’s failing experiment in something for nothing over the past eight years. And once a certain amount of news media and consumers decided to invest in this experiment the rest had to. But now it is coming to an end.

The audience will not come to paying for content out of a love for the product but out of a neccesity. The failure of the free model is going to leave us with very few quality media outlets. That means there will once again be scarcity.

When quality, free content dwindles past a certain point people will once again be willing to pay for news, just as they always were before these past eight years of illusion. The industry, for its part will need to work out a pricing structure that leverages the ease of payment and low cost of publication that online offers.

Lots of people thought that noone would ever buy music again but Itunes found  price structure that worked – as of June 2008 the store has sold 5 billion songs. The trick was knowing to do it 99 cents at a time.

Photo by Tracy Chimming

This add served up a desperately needed shot of caffeine on my way home one night, while I wearily tried to keep my eyes open for fear of missing my stop on the Q train. As I focused on the words my first instinct was a jolt of defensiveness. Dumber?  ”Great!” I thought.  ”I’m in Journalism school, heading home at 11p.m. and this add is trying to make my job even harder!”  Yes, I am aware of all the statistics that indicate that public trust in journalists is at an all time low. But really, I thought this was a below the belt jab, a marketing “upper cut.”

The Independent Film Channel launched this project, which they say reveals the truth behind the news and examines the current state of investigative journalism and how it affects our perceptions of the world around us.  A visit to the web site revelaed a host of episodes covering everything from supposed “news fixations and taboos” to the effects of the “pundit-driven” news culture. 

Launched on November 18, project affiliates include Arianna Huffington and Gideon Yago. My issue is, if you’re going to examine the state of the news then you should raise a question not make a statement. While there is value in analysis and accountability,  the add could have read, ” Is the news making you dumber?” It’s possible to rouse public awareness and curiosity without perpetuating negative perceptions.

Photo: Nick Loomis

The most time-consuming, enjoyable and rewarding project I completed this first semester in journalism school was a package for Broadcast class about growlers. If you don’t know what growlers are, or even if you do, watch the video on the New York City News Service, then come back and read the rest of the post.

When we initially pitched ideas in class, my classmates and teacher John Schiumo seemed to like the two I’d come up with: “Life on a tugboat” and a recycling exposé. I liked them too, but I thought they might be logistically tough to pull off. When it came time to request the story we wanted to work on, I put ego aside and chose the idea proposed by this guy. I had never heard of growlers before, but after learning that they’re a vessel for carrying beer I figured I couldn’t go wrong. Even if the story turned out to be uninteresting or the people we interviewed were jerks, I would still get to drink beer while reporting. You can’t beat that.

Things turned out much better than the worst-case scenario. Not only did I get to drink beer, I learned a lot and got to meet some really great people. I also became a believer. The first time we filmed at Bierkraft, I bought a growler of Hop Obama. Now I’ve added another growler to my collection, acquired last Friday on a trip to the Captain Lawrence Brewery in Pleasantville, NY.

The inside of my fridge

The brewery is open to the public on Friday evenings and Saturdays for free tastings. I’d had their Freshchester Pale Ale before, but the other offerings on tap were new to me. When I first saw “Espresso Stout,” I had doubts. I’m not a serious coffee drinker and I wondered if the taste would be overpowering. To my pleasant surprise, it was subtle and smooth. I couldn’t resist getting 64 ounces to bring home.

I’m hopeful that after I’m done with J school the media landscape will be less dire and the skills I’ve learned will be impressive enough to land me a decent job. But whatever happens a year from now, I’ll always have beer.

Photo by Maya Pope-Chappell

With budget cuts, ad losses, layoffs and newspapers going bankrupt, it’s hard to be optimistic about the state of the journalism profession.  Speaker Bill McCandless, Executive Editor of Multimedia for TheSreet.com, spoke a couple weeks ago and said that most of the mainstream newspapers will go bankrupt in 14 months.

Wow, what a future to look forward to.

With the second class of CUNY J-School students graduating next week, the prospect for them is even more sour.  They are walking away with a degree in hand but with very limited job options.  Not to mention the dire economy.

I’ve talked with a few of my fellow students, both in the graduating class and the December 2009 class, and many are worried.  Some of the conversations I’ve had have ranged from, there are really no options, to complete pessimism and questions over their decision to enter into the field of journalism.

Many news outlets and publications are coming up with innovative ways to bring the news to their audience, from including more video and multimedia content on their sites, to producing original content only found online.   This is where I think I fit in and where I believe the most opportunities lie.  So I myself, while nervous about my options in journalism, remain optimistic about the future.

This industry lull is simply in a period of transition.  Transition after all is the best time to come up with new ideas and be on the frontlines of changing and shaping the industry into what it will become in the future.

What are your feelings about the journalism industry?

I am sure people have always feared the “fourth estate,” but the past decade has seen an increase in the barriers companies, government departments and even nonprofits put up between themselves and journalists. Gone are the days when a reporter can just saunter into the police department and shoot the shit with the workers. Now there are “public information officers” whose job is to dole out sanitized versions of the facts to reporters. Very often, these PIOs don’t even do that, as I’ve experienced time and time again with the New York Police Department. But when I’ve pointed out that if they don’t speak to me, it will make them look bad, they just take down my number and promise to pass it along. The message they are sending–loud and clear–is I JUST DON’T CARE.

As the next generation of journalists, it’s up to us to educate government officials, corporate hacks and everyone else that it’s actually in their interest to talk to us and explain their side of things. Most journalists aren’t out to get their sources, but simply want to report what’s happening. Unfortunately, that’s a point that seems to lost on most people.

What do you think? Can journalists do anything to counter the trend of companies and government creating strict procedures about speaking with the press? Is it a matter of making friends with the people you want to become your sources? Is it a matter of bidding your time, until hesitant sources begin to trust you?

With the semester ending and us trying to tie up of all the loose ends in 10 days or less, I can’t help but feel guilty about not blogging. It’s in the back of my head all the time, in every conversation about journalism with my fellow classmates, I hear the irritating little reminder, “this could be a blog.”

I’ve even taken to having less conversations with people. Instead I’ve been storing silent mental notes about bloggable ideas to be. But even still as the clock ticks and tocks and the rain drops outside fall I can not fathom why I should be spreading my blogging wings when I could be calling my sick aunt– who was recently diagnosed with cancer. Or I could listen to that interview that I had the other day. Or I could finish my lox and cheese sandwich which began to rest next to my keyboard at the start of this page.

The Fly on the Wall

I guess the value of blogging can become it is linking a personal thought or opinion to a larger picture. So part of blogging, as I see it, is that it it adds the “me” to the conversation (conversations I could be having with people in real life). “It’s like a column” said the Milanese Fulbright-er sitting next to me.
I’m not sure if there’s a columnist in me that a reader needs to know about.

This brings me to one of those ideas that I mentally recorded earlier, about journalist having to leave the self out of their reports.

Throughout our discussions I’ve heard more than a fair share about the conflicts of interests that can fog the facts, and I highly appreciate getting untainted facts when I can. But the news and those who tell it’s stories share something that unites them. They share the moments that make our history, and that is powerful. As a student I tend to lean at learning the rules before breaking them. When gathering news, I quietly struggle around a scene to report unbiasedly without the I.

As a practicing documentary photographer I’ve invested time developing my personal vision and I can’t say fully heartedly that it doesn’t leak into in each and every document I produce. It may be in my selection of scenes, the words that describe them or the questions I use to get the facts told to me, but when I process the information- produce, edit and publish, I am relating a personal account as I lived it, as I questioned it, and as I fit it into a larger context.

So as for the fly on the wall, who watches and doesn’t change the scene- yeah right. In real life, if any fly comes anywhere near me, especially if it gets next to that half-eaten sandwich still sitting next to me I’d swat it away. And most people I know would do the same. Although I do like to recede into the background, it is in most scenes I live, whether or not I’m reporting.

Participation

The stories I love the most take me out of my seat and bring me into the lives of others through the reporters moves. I tend to value stories differently about people than straight news- that is they impact me and motivate me to become involved. OK, so here I am now dancing around the an idea that I’m sure we’ve all thought about, particularly since Brian Storm came to visit with us- Advocacy. Where change is needed should we act? And if we do, how does our role as journalists change? Do we then cross over into becoming to an Activist as Brian did who is now working to shed light onto specific causes? And what does blogging have to do with it anyway? I don’t know, but I thought it was worth a blog.

“I’ve found out the following from twitter: that my neighborhood in West Hollywood was in lockdown, being searched for an armed gunman; that the earthquake I felt was powerful but doing little damage, and that the NoOnProp8 protests in my neighborhood were peaceful but growing exponentially. I got this info minutes – and in some other cases, hours – before it was available from other news sources online.”

“What does get lost with this tool is it is missing a specific socioeconomic class of people that journalists should not ignore. It just requires them to go out and talk to them face to face – and that isn’t as instant as the group of people on Twitter.”

I’d go further than UMiz new media prof, Jen Reeves, above, and say that Twitter excludes most of the world’s people and what’s happening to them in their neighborhoods.  I care less about the platform, more about whom I’m talking to.  So far, Twitter is breaking news/running commentary from the college-educated, technofiles and the upper middle class.  Our media is already an echo chamber for the privileged so I’m cautious of any technology making it easier to remain that way.  It’d be very cool though, if people in Brownsville, Bed-Stuy, Upper Harlem, the South Bronx and Jamaica, Queens could Twitter with each other and the privileged.  Who wants to help me invent that platform?

“I don’t know, John. Should journalists use the telephone? The fact that you cannot see the other person is only the most obvious of that platform’s limitations. What do others think? Join the conversation: is “telephone” just a stupid audio trick?”

“Twitter takes nothing, it’s only a fragment of the whole that makes a news story.
In a 24/7 news cycle it is probably one of the greatest (and cheapest) ways to gather and distribute information. That is, if journalists are open to learn how to use Twitter, and listen. Without ever forgetting the basics of the trade.”

“Maybe one of the Tweet Revolutionaries can explain how Twitter helps with the much more crucial tasks of connecting dots, situating events in their proper context, explaining and analyzing complex issues, etc. If our information culture did a better job at the latter, I suppose I would be a lot less concerned about all the hype devoted to the former.”

“And these “Tweet Revolutionaries” you refer to, who are supposed to unfold the awesomeness of Twitter for explanation, background, context, as well as breaking news, of course… who are they? Or are these simply the people you really, really, really want to argue with, whether or not they exist?”

“I think journalists should follow people relevant to their beat in order to get some sense of the what people are talking about and to cultivate sources. Twitter may not connect the dots, but it does an awesome job of letting you subscribe to lots and lots of important ones.”

Read more (and comment!) on CJR’s page.

NPR segment

New York Times obituary

Daily Kos post