OJR front page archive for June 2009
A free-lance prototype: multimedia and entrepreneurial
June 30, 2009
The University of Virginia prepared Jason Motlagh very well for his career has a free-lance foreign correspondent.When he applied to take a journalism elective course, he was rejected because he wasn't an English major. When he applied for a job as food columnist at the school paper, he was also rejected.
But Motlagh persisted, and eventually won a spot on the school paper as travel columnist. His specialty: Travel to fascinating world spots on very low budgets.
Voila. Today Motlagh has five years of free-lance foreign correspondence under his belt and, in many respects, he is the prototype for the journalist of the future: a free-lancing, multimedia correspondent who knows how to market his work and live on a tight budget.
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Michael Jackson's death and its lessons for online journalists covering breaking news
June 25, 2009
very major breaking news events offers its lessons to the news organizations that covered it. And today's death of singer Michael Jackson should lead newsrooms to reexamine how they handle breaking news in a hyper-competitive, instant-publishing environment.I wrote last week about how news consumers used Twitter to express their displeasure, in real time and with a critical social mass, with CNN over the news network's coverage of the developing election protests in Iran. Yesterday, Twitter again became the forum for a global event, as millions gathered on the microblogging site to share rumors about, then to confirm, then to mourn Jackson's death.
AOL's celebrity gossip site TMZ appeared to have been the first to report the singer's death. Other news organizations, appropriately, waited to confirm Jackson's passing themselves before reporting the news.
But thousands of Twitter users did not wait for additional confirmation before retweeting TMZ's report, or sending out their own tweets about Jackson's death. Even after the Los Angeles Times confirmed the passing, other news organizations held back before publishing the news to their Twitter feeds and e-mail alert lists.
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Growing pains, part 2: Can grassroots journalism help underserved communities?
June 24, 2009
While the newspaper industry struggles to find new definition in an Internet age, the population most at risk of being left behind is low-income communities. Local newspapers are suffering significant losses in the industry, and yet the medium is still heavily relied upon as a source of information for poorer areas where Internet access is minimal. Many of these communities are already under-served by the media, and as their newspapers disappear, the void is likely to widen. Eventually, these communities may benefit greatly from the communication tools the Internet and mobile news delivery will provide. But during this period of turbulence the digital divide could impede progress. In affected areas, the wealthy will be gaining a medium while the poor are losing one. Meanwhile, in areas with more universalized Internet access, impoverished communities will be given access to news on a scale never before extended by traditional media.Community Journalism and Hyper-Local Markets
Communities in South Los Angeles have long been starved of media attention. Since the collapse of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in 1989, the newspaper industry in Los Angeles has been dominated by a single, powerful newspaper. The Los Angeles Times overshadows local newspapers such as the Los Angeles Wave and the Los Angeles Daily News, creating a monopoly on news coverage that favors broader stories over community-sensitive pieces. Stories from South Los Angeles are rare, and the Los Angeles Times has been criticized for limiting its coverage of the area to tragic or violent breaking news stories.
"The LA Times covers breaking news that they deem worth covering," said Don Wanlass, news editor for the Los Angeles Wave, one of three newspapers based in South Los Angeles that makes an effort to cover news significant to residents in cities like Compton, Watts and Inglewood. "There's a lot of sentiment out there that the Times only reports bad news, like political corruption scandals and shootings. They don't go into the small communities and get some of the stories that are there to be had."
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Life after death: newspapers and the re-invention of paper technology
June 19, 2009
The threat underlying the transition to a paperless, Internet world is, in itself, ironic. Firstly, the illusive space of the online sphere is being filled with a cacophony of "voices," many of which are echoing the content produced by the traditional media. The Internet speaks in a language of reaction; meanwhile, the some of the catalysts themselves are being destroyed. Journalists are worried about the future of the profession, and the media industry is fearful of its own demise. Secondly, while information is exponentially increasing online, the first areas of journalism suffering the threat of extinction are among the very forms that attempt to make sense of extensive information. While sites like Twitter ask users to define their world in 140 characters or less, and speed – above accuracy or content – is the competitive force fueling online news outlets, some contextual, interpretive and analytical modes of journalism are fading away.Investigative and literary journalism are among the forms in danger. Both rely on deep-dive reporting methods: the former usually tackling political and economic institutions and the latter focusing on sociological trends. As such, these long-form species fall into the category of "deeper understanding" and are a means of information management – a way to navigate – according to Barry Siegel, former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and head of the literary journalism program the University of California, Irvine. "I'd describe it as a form of subterranean news," said Siegel. "We're writing about human nature, the nature of our community, and about the things that are most important in those communities, which are not always the obvious breaking news headlines." Literary journalism, which Tom Wolfe described as journalism that reads "like a novel," concentrates on context above immediacy, and as a result, requires more time and resources than hard news. Siegel says that he spends four months to a year on his own pieces.
In a world of infinite information, it would seem that providing context is more relevant than ever. Investigative journalism, the detective agency of the people, has acted as a "watchdog" presence, independent of government and big business, since its inception. Literary journalism, often bundled with terms like "long form" and "feature," has meant sociological understanding and on-the-ground experience of the human condition in all its varying colors.
Tightened revenue streams have encouraged quick fixes, such as re-assigning long-form journalists to cover "short-form" news and reducing funds for contextual reporting. But for the newspaper industry, this could be a counterproductive move. The entire experience of narrative story telling is changing, according to Sue Cross, an AP news executive who oversees the wire service's digital operation. Video and audio are feeding the experience of long-form journalism online, and instead of attempting to emulate the speed of the Internet, the newspaper industry should be embracing the change and using technology to enhance deep-dive reporting. By cutting immersive journalism in favor of less expensive, superficial forms, the newspaper industry risks losing everything that has made it a valuable medium for 300 years.
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Lessons for online journalists from #CNNFail and the Iran uprising
June 17, 2009
As Iranians took to the streets over the weekend to protest the country's recent election, thousands of users of Twitter were staging a protest of their own: against CNN for not devoting as much attention to the Iranian situation as Twitter users wanted.The hashtag #CNNFail became one of the top trending topics on Twitter Saturday night, as Twitterers expressed their outrage over CNN airing repeats of feature interviews instead of live coverage of the protests.
On Saturday, I retweeted this comment from @pinoy2com: "#CNNfail is 4th most Tweeted keyword. A turning point for audiences signaling what they wanted covered by mainstream?"
Indeed. The virtual protest provided several valuable lessons for online journalists who wish to retain the respect and loyalty of their audiences in an increasingly interactive world. Here are 10 lessons from #CNNFail:
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How can we better teach journalism students to manage reader-driven content communities?
June 12, 2009
When I was teaching online journalism, the most difficult aspect of the craft for me to teach was its most unique: online journalism's ability to harness the collective reporting power of its audience.Sure, I could lecture all semester about moderating discussion forums, eliciting thoughtful reader comments, recruiting guest bloggers and structuring a crowdsourced reporting project. But instruction provides just a small part of the learning experience. Learning demands exercise, repetition and feedback, as well.
Journalism educators traditionally have done well to introduce their students to a professional working environment. Students initially turn in their work, on deadline, to an instructor who serves in the role of an editor. Later, students move into actual newsroom environments, working for student newspapers and broadcasts, under the director of more experienced students, and sometimes, faculty advisors. They practice their craft, interviewing sources, reviewing documents, working with editors and producing work for public consumption. Feedback from editors and instructors completes the loop, preparing students for professional life in a newsroom.
The academic calendar, unfortunately, frustrates efforts to extend that model to online publishing. We can publish newsroom-produced reports just as easily as we could in print and on air, but one semester (or worse, one quarter) rarely provides enough time to build an audience large enough to create a significant amount of user-generated content [UGC].
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How metro newsrooms can recapture their local dominance
June 10, 2009
Proliferating blogs and micro-sites are producing so much local news, hard and soft, that the continuing shrinkage and even death of metro papers will leave no troubling void in metro coverage, Mark Potts concludes in an extensively linked post on his Recovering Journalist blog. Potts comes close to putting metros collectively in the past tense. They can't make a successful transition from print to the Internet, he says, because all they offer are “your basic one-size-fits all metro newspaper Web site.”But in this case the one size – large – is the right one. The metros' problem is they don't know how to exploit their size. For all their cutbacks, surviving metros still have considerable staff and other resources that could be mobilized to do what sweat-equity blogs and micro-sites can't do nearly as well or at all.
Metros must become like Gulliver – not the shipwrecked Gulliver who is ensnared by the six-inch-high Lilliputians, but the Gulliver who later outwitted his captors and escaped to freedom. For all their cutbacks, surviving metro newspapers, online or in print, still have considerable staff and other resources that could be mobilized to do what sweat-equity blogs and micro-sites can’t yet do nearly as well, or at all.
Gulliver got smart. Will the ensnared metros?
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Industry chaos provides reporters with an opportunity to rethink standards
June 4, 2009
The impending collapse of many news organizations is providing thoughtful journalists with an opportunity to reinvent the practice of their craft. What should be newsworthy? What should be the impact of a news story? Working for their old employers, many journalists paid little attention to such questions. When they did address them, too often it was with simplistic answers that had little relation to how the public actually perceived their work.As old newsrooms shrink, or close, journalists now can address these questions in the context of new opportunities, whether they be self-publishing or working with other journalists in new, online start-ups.
Let's look at this within the context of a personal example
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Thought Leadership drives local media revenue
June 3, 2009
In an earlier piece "Local media survival depends on Low Cost Sales Models," I detailed the favorable economics of pursuing a broader base of advertisers if you employed a sales model appropriate to the size of ad budget. McKinsey had done some analysis that echoed the experience we have had setting up low-cost customer acquisition models using telesales-based approaches. A critical facet of developing this lower cost model is having very cost effective lead generation.Today, most of what I have observed with local media is they are using phone-based sales methods akin to the uninvited and irritating telemarketing methods that can interrupt our evenings. Not surprisingly, these "script readers" have had very low yield. Script readers can be fine for simple things like setting appointments but that's a far cry from closing meaningful business. The successful alternative is to become invited and to establish a relationship with prospective customers through high quality lead generation.
There are many different tactics for lead generation but the one I've seen perform the best has been the organizations that establish thought leadership in their field of expertise.
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