Monthly Archives: March 2008

Serving readers

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My good friend Jason over at wemediaguru has a good post that I wanted to touch on.
In response to a Rob Curley post on serving audiences and giving readers what they want:

A perfect example at where I work is the fact that accident stories and crime are well read on our web site but often those pieces get buried in the B section of the print product.

He continues:

Curley’s point is this and it has been said before: If we don’t listen to our audience we will quickly become irrelevant both as information providers and as solid businesses.

It occurs to me that there are a couple of things that exist of the old way of doing journalism that have always kind of seemed to live in a bit of “editorial limbo.” For example:

  • Ever have an editor who asks great questions of a story, the kind that really serve to make a topic relevant to readers, and then make completely unrelated choices for page 1?
  • Most journalists love covering breaking news and getting the story first, but balk at really publishing right now as in a blog or online posting.

Obviously, the Web presents new challenges and opportunities for the business (and service) of news. But maybe if we start thinking of these new tools as ways to cut through the b.s. and do the kind of work we’ve aspired to, the hill we’re climbing might get a bit less steep.

What tools? Wrong question.

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Got an e-mail this morning from the “online-news” listserve from Poynter, pointing to a new post talking about tools:

Ask an experienced carpenter about the differences between a table saw and a jigsaw and you are sure to hear a detailed explanation about when to choose one over the other. Same thing if you ask a plumber about a fixed or adjustable wrench. Or a surgeon about a scalpel or a gamma knife. Or a journalist about the differences between Dreamweaver and a content management system? Well, maybe not.

Here’s how I responded:

As a graduate student (returning after working as a daily reporter), I made sure to take an independent study in basic Web classes offered to undergrads. I did this because I knew I wanted to get back into the business after school and realized that without such training, I’d be left behind. Faculty must start recognizing this and reflecting it in coursework.

The biggest problem I’ve seen in J-schools is that advertising and journalism are taught side-by-side. I know, I sound like a grizzled editing prof, but hear me out: many students come out of school with the idea that news gathering and press releases are somehow related or–worse–of equal importance.

Regardless of whether students go on to be “journalists” in the daily-paper sense of the word, J-school grads need to be prepared to navigate the dynamic Web and help steer their bosses there as well.

Sure, there are a pile of enthusiasts who blog and do some reporting and some Web design. That’s the story of the Web. But trained journalists must start leading the charge toward information management: “life organizing” for readers.
Regardless of the technology used, there are two keys as I see it:

  1. HTML and CSS are as important to journalists today as the ubiquitous AP stylebook and hand-coding should be taught with basic news skills. Basic understanding of databases (how to build and use them) is also vital. (On this note, I’m still looking for good material to teach myself this skill…hint.)
  2. I’ve had to strip most of what I learned back to old-school reporting techniques (as I understand them) like shoe-leather and meeting people–building networks. This is just lost in the j-school canon, I fear, in favor of well-intentioned, but high-minded orations on how journalism has slipped down the tubes. Bull.

Students more than ever need to learn how to create and manage vast networks of people. This is where blogging can be a great tool and more organizations must start using its two-way functionality instead of thinking in old “mass comm” ways.
Thoughts?