Innovation in College Media Rotating Header Image

links for 2009-06-27

  • The real problem is the way that we as journalists manage information, because that determines so much else: the kinds of stories we’re able to envision and construct, the amount of context we’re able to bring to bear in a short amount of time and our ability to connect the dots. In general, and this is my scientific conclusion, we suck at managing information.

Thornburg - fertile failure

Ryan Thornburg makes the case that universities can be the “fertile failure” ground for news organizations. I’m not so sure on some levels. Here’s the college media-specific quote:

Campus news organizations should also be a natural place for professional news organizations to test crazy ideas that run the risk of damaging their brand. Not that campus news organizations are all dying to damage their brands, but their transitory audience makes small failures much less costly over the long run — failure artifacts don’t aggregate at campus news organizations the way they aggregate at professional news organizations.

Now, campus news organizations don’t always operate under the same profit-driven motives as their “professional” counterparts, but there’s more to the story here.

Campus news operations *do* operate under some profit motives. They aren’t *exactly* the same as the professional industry, but there are a lot of college news media advisers who are sweating the same advertising problems as their professional counterparts.

A couple of questions:

What is a “small” failure? Thornburg posits the “transitory” audience as a justification for letting college media take these hits while the professional media don’t. I don’t see that as a positive. College media do not have the same operating margins. They operate with volunteer staff. They fight all the time with campus people who would cut their funding, deny them access to necessary information, and the like. Why should they be the people stepping up to the plate for failure?

A necessary correlate: Why won’t the people who are going to *make the money* put up the money? 99 percent of college newspapers are non-profit. Their mission is both to inform and to educate future journalists. Why should these organizations, who must straddle a very difficult fence, be the people who bear the burden of failure? To prove that it can be done?

I’m not getting it. Where is the benefit for the college news org?

Granted, if something goes right, then the college news org can crow about its success, but are professional news orgs going to give back to the college news orgs who blazed the trail? Somehow, I’m doubting that.

Finally, I doubt the ability of most college news organizations to generate the manpower to go into these types of “fertile failure” experiments. I’ve been following college media online for over three years, and see a distressing lack of such experimentation to engender the type of confidence Ryan seems to have. There are a few great web editors, and some really awesome multimedia journalists, but the sad fact is that college media still hasn’t figured out the key anymore than their professional counterparts - precisely because so many college journalists are still living in the 20th century.

Maybe I’m wrong. I wrote a long time ago that I thought college journalism programs could be the engines of innovation. Now, I’m not so sure. I’d love for someone to prove me wrong.

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links for 2009-06-24

links for 2009-06-23

Still questions about revenue, online presence

As I mentioned earlier this summer, I was in Iowa this week speaking (along with Steve Buttry) to a group of 8 newspaper journalists (editors and publishers) at the Iowa Newspaper Foundation’s Leadership Seminar series.

The topic was “Leadership in a Changing Media Environment.” My part was to talk about how the Internet changes the news equation, and what kind of free tools are available to enhance the news organization’s Web presence.

It was a fascinating three hours (even though my luggage was lost and I ended up in a t-shirt and shorts for the discussion), and one that brought me back to my roots in small-town journalism (I was the editor of a weekly in Texas for four years before heading off to graduate school).

The main takeaway for me was that many small newspapers are still struggling to figure out how to use their web presence, with the constant idea that it’s taking away from the print product (cannibalizing).

It took quite a while for me to argue for putting breaking news out (football updates, city council updates, etc.) via Twitter or other online means.

“Why would people then read the print product?” asked one participant. Because there’s *more* there than in a 140-word tweet, was part of my answer.

But the main answer, my main ideal that I’ve been talking about for over three years in this blog, is that “news” is more important than just the bottom line. If you’re in the “news” business, then your job is to report the news, to be the “watercooler” for your community - the place where people go to get the information they need to navigate an incredibly complex world. If you’re locking all that news up behind a paid wall, you’re not fulfilling your community service aspirations. You’re no more than the local Wal-Mart.

I honestly don’t see the Internet and the printed product as competing in these smaller communities (yet). I see them as complementary. The online presence can add depth to the printed product. It can add to the advertising side as well if used properly. But that will ultimately require seeing both Internet and print as parts of the process.

I hope the editors and publishers who left the conference went away with some ideas to inspire them to change their online strategies and be more proactive in the online space. Only time will tell.

At several points during the conversation, I said emphatically that I wished I had tools like Twitter and YouTube and WordPress and other free online tools when I was editing that small-town newspaper in Texas. My journalism would have been stronger, and the connections to the community would be deeper. That’s what every small-town newspaper publisher should aim toward.

I’d say the same for my college newspaper, where I was editor. As a journalist, I want to be in the conversation. I want to be the place people go for information. As more people do that online, I can’t help but feel we need to follow that movement and use all the tools at our disposal to make that happen.

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links for 2009-06-13

links for 2009-06-12

links for 2009-06-11

links for 2009-06-10

20/20 on graphic design

via Doug Fisher, this: