Before I give you my ‘pitch’, I want to lay some statistics on you:
How many newspaper journalists have lost their jobs in 2009?
(either through being laid off or through buyouts)
Answer: more than 10-thousand. (source of info click here)
Another statistic:
U-S metropolitan dailies that have closed since this site was created in March, 2007
Works In Progress: Former print dailies that have adopted hybrid online/print or online-only models.
Detroit News/Detroit Free Press
Catskill Daily Mail/Hudson Register-Star
Source: Newspaper Deathwatch web site
Gent who writes this site is also a potential competitor for my idea – he’s a link to his “pitch page”.
Here’s my idea:
I say we design a program to help small and medium sized newspapers (do we add TV newsrooms?) develop a training program to do what we’re trying to do in our class: bring more of the Internet resources into helping these smaller newsrooms figure out how to use the new journalism tools to bring in more “customers, readers and/or viewers” – with their ever dwindling staffs.
There are a couple of ways I’ve found to do this – but you may know of more:
This is a link to an article about a site that is promoting journalists to become their own “brand” on the web. The saying “you’re only as good as your name” comes into play here. Maybe they would let you direct your “reporters pieces” to your newspaper or TV newsroom site.
Here’s an article that talks about a program at Northwestern that combines journalism students and computer science students to develop new ideas for online journalism. Ideas include a plug in system that allows reporters to fact check while they are writing so they don’t have to bounce back to websites or search engines. Other ideas involve sites like Twitter.
But a concept that more and more newsrooms will need to adopt is the idea of turning all reporters into “mojo’s” – short for mobile journalists. Week before last, I attended a "Backpack Journalism" seminar at the Poynter Institute in Florida. And they were teaching many of these skills to a small group of perhaps 20 journalists from print, online, radio & TV. Here’s a blog entry from a journalism professor that has a nice wrap on one version of what the job entails.
Reporters are losing jobs and those sticking with it are finding new skills are needed or retraining is required. I think we can help out these smaller newsrooms that have to grow their online presence. While at the same time help steer how our industry moves into the new age of journalism. And the changing picture of what customers WANT out of news sites.
I think we might get seed money for this from outfits like – the Newspapers Association of America; National Council of Journalism organizations; The Newspaper Guild; American Society of Newspaper Editors; Pew Foundation – just to name a few.
Then we develop either a series of web videos or a consulting program where we take this knowledge to the newsrooms that need help. Can we make money on this?
Let me know your thoughts.
Thanks –
Sheila - great post! It really does dovetail in with the project I put up also - getting into many more specifics about the "how" of training and equipping fleeter 'journalists' whether amateur or pros. I would be interested in combining forces on a project that could help local papers. Honestly, I think they are the ones most willing to get to the openness and community transparency required by new cultural expectations.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea -- training journalists how to make money! This could be a challenge. I think developing the online training is a great idea and we could get really creative with this one.
ReplyDeleteThis could be a very good project. The online training idea is excellent, although it will require good research on who's doing it already and who's buying. Lots of creativity and use of the textbook/class material will be involved in this one. And it will be fun to do as well as useful beyond this class.
ReplyDeleteMatthew and Elizabeth:
ReplyDelete1. Who will be the instructors? Journalists who have been successful at transitioning or other professionals (web developers, IT technicians, etc.)?
2. Merely teaching the journalists how to be proficient online may not translate into rebuilding successful small and medium size news organizations. What if you don't get funding from those organizations named?
3. This could turn into a platform for small papers to learn from each other and solve problems together, rather than being isolated.
Thank you Matthew and Elizabeth for your thoughts. Training journalists is a tough road - i understand that. And because newspapers (and small TV stations) are LOSING revenue from advertising to the internet, getting them to put money up for this is going to be a challenge. I think there is a possibility that we could get seed money from a newspaper of broadcasting foundation to help develop the program.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think the instructors need to be people who are doing this now. We could videotape them doing their work routine so you could see how the workflow happens. And have a better idea of how to incorporate these skills into your (small and medium newspapers and TV) routines and your websites.
I am actually pitching this already to some foundations to let me do an internship this fall and try and develop something like this. I JUST got a HD digital camcorder and heading out to do my first shoot as a backpack journalist this coming weekend. So that would solve some of the problems like - who will shoot the tape and edit it. I can do those two things.
I realize it needs some focus but I think these news groups need help to bring websites up to par when it comes to interacting with customers. I am not as familiar with how to make websites interactive. So that's where I would need to team up with someone or a news organization that is already doing this - so I can videotape them about how they do it and get them to show me some of the skills involved.
There may be a better way to bring this idea into reality. But I think it's safe to say the need is truly there.
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