Media
Media
How Many Journalists Does it Take …
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 03/07/2009 - 08:42A few days ago, Joe Cascio wrote a blog piece about his take on bloggers and journalists. He talks about Dan Schorr’s segment on Weekend Edition on NPR last weekend and “how it’s disturbing to him [Mr. Schorr] that anyone can ‘publish’ things on the internet and no editor or staff fact-checks it or holds it to any journalistic standard.”
The role of editors for bloggers is an old discussion. Many of my professional journalism friends often talk about the importance of editors. The standard response amongst bloggers is that all of the readers of the blog are the editors and fact-checkers. I know I’ve gotten my share of recommended edits sent to me by my readers.
Joe goes on to say, “I think journalists are unnerved and defensive because one of the mediums that they’re published on now is open to anyone to publish.” This may be true of some journalists, but it seems like there is something else that is much more unnerving. Joe says, “anyone with sufficient money can print their own newspaper,” but judging by all the bankruptcies, layoffs, and newspapers shutting down, I’m not sure there are that many people with sufficient money to print their own newspaper.
I think this gets to the part that is really unnerving. Some of the best journalists in our state are getting laid off. Ken Doctor has an interesting article that really puts it into perspective. In Online-Only PI: 22.....and the Rest, Skidoo, he argues that as newspapers move online, they only need, or can only support between 10 and 15% of the newsroom staff that they had when they were a print publication. He brings the point home thus:
Let's figure there are 44,000 journalists left in US newsrooms, an up-to-date tally hard to come up with. So, if the industry magically flipped that switch tomorrow, we've got an estimate of how many online-only published could pay: 6600 journalists, and that's at the optimistic 15% number.
That’s 37,400 journalists looking for new jobs. I’d be unnerved too, but not about Joe being able to publish his own blog.
Of course, this is based on the idea of everything going online. Ken Doctor points out that even thought newspaper revenues have declined by around $11 billion dollars over the past few years, they are still bring in $36 billion+ in revenues. It also assumes that new sources of revenues don’t arise, or that a new demand for news doesn’t come along.
But there are changes coming. Everyone is looking towards hyperlocal journalism. Kirk Petersen writes about his hometown now having five competing local websites. It isn’t surprising that GateHouse and the New York Times tangled over hyperlocal portals in the Boston area.
Yet perhaps it isn’t the format that matters; newsprint or websites. At a recent discussion about newspapers and the new media in New Haven, one guest got up and said that the reason no one buys newspapers anymore is that they stopped having any real news. Journalists haven’t been asking the hard questions. Perhaps if newspapers really asked the hard questions, and told readers something they needed to know, more people would pay for the newspapers on the newsstands and more people would visit news portals online.
To address this, a website in San Francisco was set up, spot.us. The idea of Spot.Us is to fund independent investigative reporting. They are off to a great start. Meanwhile, in Boston, The New England News Forum, the Boston University College of Communication and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute will sponsor NewsOut, asking the question, “What to do when the newsroom lights go out?”
Personally, I’m optimistic about the future of the news industry. I hope and believe that we will find funding for real investigative reporting and that will bring back interest in the news, and the good reporters will find the tips and tidbits that can be found in blogs useful as they start asking hard questions again.
NPR and Twitter
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 02/28/2009 - 13:50It is Saturday morning. I turn on my laptop and check various websites; new friends to add on Facebook, Tweets to reply to on Twitter. I grab a cup of coffee and tune in Weekend Edition on NPR. I am not alone. NPR has just run a story about Twitter, and Andy Carvin’s efforts to get Dan Schorr to use Twitter. In the world of Twitter, it is a big story.
During the time that Weekend Edition is on in my area, there are nearly 300 tweets about NPR. Many are simply saying, “Listening to NPR”. Others go into much more detail. They talk about the weather. Some people are experiencing snow or rain. For others it is just overcast. Some try to beat the weather by sitting next to a fire in the fireplace. For me, it is a beautiful sunny day, but we do have a winter storm watch for tomorrow evening.
A few people mention their morning beverage. In my sample there are twice as many coffee drinkers as tea drinkers. No one tweeted about Latte, but there was one cappuccino drinker. For food, people talk about corn bread, oatmeal and barley soup.
Listeners talk about still being in bed, or in their bathrobes. Some are doing crossword puzzles or looking at news papers. Others talk about sleeping babies and sleeping dogs. Still others are starting to garden, do the laundry, take their dogs for a walk, or watch birds.
Nearly half of the people mention the NPR story about Twitter and a couple dozen have said that they have started using Twitter because of the story. The responses are varied, about whether or not Dan Schorr ‘gets Twitter’, about how long NPR has been following Twitter. To the person that thinks that NPR just discovered Twitter, they have had Andy Carvin working for them and Twittering for quite a while. Andy has already sent out over 20,000 tweets on Twitter. However, I haven’t been able to get to any of his messages prior to last July.
Responses to the twitter story include discussions about ‘editorless content’, the agora, and the quote, “Twitter: Because no man is an island”.
People are also talking about other stories they’ve enjoyed. Many talk about the economy. Others talk about the library blog, a story about algebra, the interview with Philippe Petit or the piece on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. This is an area that I like. With Twitter, I can join with likeminded people around the country who are also listening to and sharing their reactions to Twitter.
NPR becomes a top trend on Twitter, at least for the morning, and many people comment on it. Later, the trend gets passed by Transparency Camp, “un-conference … about convening a trans-partisan tribe of open government advocates from all walks …to share knowledge on how to use new technologies to make our government transparent and meaningfully accessible to the public.” To great trends that ought to go good together.
So, next week, I’ll probably listen to Saturday Weekend Edition with Twitter Search tuned to NPR. Perhaps we can continue the discussion there.
This Week and Beyond in Social Media
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/27/2009 - 21:35It has been another week preoccupied with computer programming, although I did get a chance to participate in some social media activities this week, as well as get through at least a little bit of my email.
It started off with a few messages that I sent out from the Woodbridge Board of Education meeting. I used ping.fm so my messages went to a bunch of different locations. My first two messages were
At Woodbridge Board of Education where there is a discussion of twenty first century curriculum linking world languages and technology
One of the students is doing a wonderful presentation of the food pyramid in Spanish using the Smartboard.
On Facebook, a Connecticut State Representative, Jonathon Pelto responded ‘wow – cool’. Over on LiveJournal, a friend from Michigan whom I met years ago when her teacher used a text based virtual world that I ran to teach a class on ‘Brave New World’ responded ‘Smartboards are sweet…especially when properly used.’
After the meeting was over, I chatted with the chair of the Board of Education as well as the Superintendent about the real time online discussion I had about the meeting. It says something important about the world our students are being prepared for. There is so much more I want to write about this when I get some free time.
On Tuesday, I received an email from another longtime friend. The Rev. Kate Heichler of Church of Christ the Healer, together with The Rev. Mark Lingle of St. Francis Church, both in Stamford, have set up a Lenten Reflections blog. Kate suggested that I might offer to help the church I attend, Christ Church, Bethany set up a similar Lenten Reflections blog.
I’ve been very busy, so I quickly threw together to live for a season and when I get a little more time will help people at the church with the blog some more.
Thursday, I went to a Mystic Sushi Tweetup. I joined @JoeCascio, @trishdarling of smashingdarling.com, and @EmrysTetu of WellnessWithFood.com at Peking Tokyo in Mystic for a dinner of sushi. We had a great discussion covering a wide selection of topics.
Today, I receive a message on Facebook from State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield inviting people to the Judiciary Committee Public Hearing. In the invitation, Gary said, “"If you care about the Raise the Age legislation and or abolishing the death penalty and you have time on Monday you should come testify." He provides information about testifying at the hearing.
As I went through my emails, I’ve found plenty of other important events. Next Wednesday at 7 PM, Kim will be speaking about election day registration at the Democracy for Fairfield County Meetup at the Silver Star Diner in Norwalk. Ned Lamont will also be speaking there about the stimulus package. Democracy for New Haven will be meeting at Wednesday, starting at 6:30 at Wall Street Pizza in New Haven having a discussion about the Connecticut budget proposal. State Sen. Toni Harp, Co-Chair of Appropriations Committee, and Sal Luciano, Executive Director of AFSCME Council 4 are among the speakers expected for an action oriented public discussion.
The Shoreline League of Democratic Women is also having a meeting the same evening. Their meeting will start at 7:30 at the Guilford Library and will host a panel of State Legislators talking about smart growth.
Then, on Thursday, the Energy and Technology Committee will hold a Public Hearing about four bills, including AN ACT CONCERNING PUBLIC ACCESS TELEVISION CHANNELS, along with three other bills. I haven’t read the proposed bill closely enough to have any opinions on it, but would love to hear comments from others.
Also on Thursday, Common Cause volunteers will be helping get the spring mailing out starting at 5:00 PM at the Common Cause office at 55 Oak St in Hartford. Then, starting at 6:10 in Room 128 of the Main Hall of Yale Law School, the Yale College Democrats, the Yale College Republicans, and the Yale Law School Democrats will sponsor an event with Common Cause to discussion election day registration. State Rep. Lesser and State Rep. Winfield will be speaking.
Friday, the Connecticut Fund for the Environment will be holding its 19th Annual Long Island Sound Citizens Summit: Investing in Clean Water: for Sound health, jobs and the economy. The summit will take place from 8:30 until 3:15 at the Holiday Inn Hotel and Conference Center in Bridgeport.
Looking further out, there are a few important social media related events coming up. On March 12, is digiday:Mobile and digiday:Social at the W hotel in New York City. These are two half-day conferences set up back to back to talk about marketing using mobile and social technology.
On March 21st will be Newsout, “What to do when the newsroom lights go out: Options and strategies for New England communities.” It looks like it will be a good discussion with some great speakers.
Then, ending off the month is Freedom to Connect, a yearly gathering of some of the most interesting thinkers about communications and the Internet.
So, I’ll continue to try and balance some computer programming with some family time and lots of social media, both as quick messages on various sites and face to face meetings as well. What are you up to? Will I see you at one of these events?
Discovering Something Important About Government
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/26/2009 - 08:27C.S. Lewis reportedly once said that he didn’t read the newspapers, claiming that if something important happened, someone would tell him. The recent news about bankruptcies, layoffs and proposed closings in the newspaper industry illustrates that perhaps he isn’t the only one with such an approach to the news.
Indeed, I first heard about the Journal Register’s bankruptcy filing via Twitter. I heard about the Hearst corporations threat to shut down the San Francisco Chronicle on NPR, and when Mark Pazniokas was let go from the Hartford Courant, I heard about it first via an Instant Message, with a message on Facebook following quickly after.
In my case, if I’m at my computer when I hear news like this, I start searching for various stories about it, typically starting at CT News Junkie and the New Haven Independent, and then supplementing my information with opinions from people at CT Local Politics and MyLeftNutmeg. All of this remains paperless.
This brings up an important question. Who determines what is important? What is newsworthy? Years ago, Walter Cronkite was our most trusted source of information and the New York Times gave us all the news that was fit to print.
Reporters find what they thought was important and try to get their editors to run the stories. People like Mark Pazniokas had in depth knowledge of what was going on at the Capitol and could pick out what was important and what was nothing new. Papers even had people trained in investigative reporting, that would spend countless hours digging deep into the hidden and underlying information of a story. Now, the last vestiges of these skills are being slept away.
At the same time, we have a new President in Washington who is vowing transparency. Yet as volumes of information about our government and our spending gets made public, who will sort through all of it to find something important?
One possibility is that we will return to a way of information gathering that existed before newspapers tried to appear objective, when they were the mouthpieces of partisan groups. When I think of the information I’ve received about Gov. Rell’s proposed budget, most of it has come from groups with very clear objectives. They don’t want to see funding for good education, clean energy or clean elections cut. Obama supporters in Connecticut are organizing a legislative watch group to do more of the same on a grassroots basis.
Besides the partisanship, these efforts run into a few different problems. There is the loss of skills and institutional memory that people like Mr. Pazniokas brought to the news room. Some of this can be addressed by creating easily searchable online repositories. Some of this can be addressed by training volunteers in better reporting.
Another issue is that of editorship. I’m less concerned about the proof reading aspects of editorship. It sometimes feels like I’ve got a thousand editors pointing out typos in my blog posts. No, the issue is, how do we decide which stories really are important. Some of this may be achievable by crowd sourcing. Articles that get a lot of attention, that get flagged as important by many readers, are perhaps the most important. Yet, as with the skills that the writers need, we need more skilled readers. We need better literacy education so that people can determine what really is important, as well as what is trustworthy, well written, and so on.
Then, there is the issue of distribution. The Hartford Courant has a circulation in the hundreds of thousands, but advocacy groups mailing lists are rarely more than a few thousand. Perhaps these few thousand are the influencers, the people that care and will act upon the information they receive. So, besides better training for activists, we need to help get people more involved. Yet newspapers have also been trying to boost circulation, without much effect, so the prospects in this area for activist groups remains questionable.
Where does this leave us? I’ll keep getting my news via Twitter and instant messages. I’ll keep reading good online sources of information, and I’ll keep encouraging others to join groups like Investigative Reporters and Editors and take courses at places like News University.
If we all do this, then maybe we will stand a chance to discover something important about our government.
What’s Online Near Woodbridge, CT?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 10:55Amidst all the stories of troubles in the news industry, the one hope always seems to be that somehow online news will take up the slack. Yet most of the time, while everyone talks about how it would be great if online news would take up the slack, few seem to do anything about actually bringing higher quality local news online.
Wednesday, the Knight Foundation announced the the first winners of the Knight Community Information Challenge. At the top of the list comes “A hyperlocal news site staffed by professional journalists and citizen contributors in the five ethnically diverse towns of Connecticut's Lower Naugatuck Valley”.
The Valley Independent Sentinel proposal was submitted by the The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. The Foundation works with the Online Journalism Project to support of the New Haven Independent. The Knight Foundation grant will be used to support an affiliated organization, the Valley Community Foundation which will create the Valley Independent Sentinel.
Paul Bass, the executive director of the Online Journalism Project says that the Valley Foundation is contracting with OJP to produce the new site. It will launch in mid-2009, following a model similar to the New Haven Independent. It will be an online only site, publishing multiple stories daily, five days a week. It will be staffed by professional journalists with heavy reader interaction and strong use of multimedia.
Here in Woodbridge, we are fairly fortunate to have sites like the Amity Observer and the Orange Bulletin covering local events, although I would love to see much more coverage in Woodbridge. However, as you get deeper into the valley, there is even more of a need of good, in depth local coverage.
For other online developments, I was recently contacted by ‘Roxy’ of Roxiticus Desperate Housewives. She has set up a set of websites, Roxy’s Best Of.... She’s from New Jersey so most of her sites so far have been centered on the Garden State. However, she is expanding into Connecticut and has set up Roxy’s Best Of ... Connecticut.
Roxy’s Best Of ... seems to reside somewhere between the hyperlocal journalism of sites like the New Haven Independent, reviews on sites like Yelp and the community of bloggers on sites like MyBlogLog, EntreCard and Adgitize. My sense is that it is a set of sites for fun narrative reviews of really good local places.
As a supporter of local companies and of positive news stories, I think Roxy has a good idea. She’s asked me to write for the Best Of sites in Connecticut. She has said that it is fine if I cross-post material to my own blog, that there is no pressure on posting according to any deadlines, and that if it turns into something that produces revenue, she will be sharing revenue with her writers. While it probably won’t be producing the hard journalism that the New Haven Independent does, it will be a valuable additional to local information.
On a more family oriented basis, @jcnork, whom I met through Twitter and lives in the next town over has a new blog post up about the State of the Norkosphere. He mentions the blog that his brother keeps about being in the Peace Corp in Romania, and a blog that his son has set up. Jack hasn’t been blogging much as he spends more and more time on Twitter, but it would be great to see him doing more long form writing.
Whether you are looking for good journalism, stories about good people to do business with around Connecticut, or simply good family stories, things look like they are moving in a good direction online around Woodbridge, CT.
