Grade Pitch

Based on my performance this semester, I believe I deserve a C for my final grade in advanced reporting.
In my list of goals from the beginning of the semester, I stated that improving my writing in longer, feature-style stories was my main goal for the semester. With my stories on the Mid-Missouri Comics Collective, professional comic book writers in Kansas City and other arts stories, I believe I have stretched and improved my skills. Based on the field I want to enter in journalism — entertainment journalism, particularly at the publication of my former internship Wizard Entertainment — these clips have been extremely helpful in job applications and, after sending them to Wizard to update my resume, I was contacted for a job interview and later offered a job. In that sense, I consider my work at the Missourian a success because it showed Wizard that I had learned from my time there and gave me a chance to demonstrate that I could apply those skills elsewhere.
I believe my class participation during the course of the semester was also a strength for me in this course. I enjoyed the chance to express my opinons and views in a blog and later have some of them reach not only my classmates but faculty members across the Journalism School as well. In all our talks about how we want to improve the Missourian in our community and make it a source for discussion, I ended up using my blog to cause discussion within our journalism community. My e-mail to Tom — which later became a blog post — about the need for a forum on the Missourian’s web site was a topic of discussion in class and in e-mail form among editors and faculty. My post about whether we were really listening to our readers led to a class-long discussion. I think in writing these posts and managing my blog in a thoughtful and provocative way, as well as participating in the discussions in class, I demonstrated the theme of discussion outlined in the syllabus and prompted my classmates to do the same.
However, I am aware that the quantity of my output fell significantly short. I spent a lot of time on my first three stories on the comic book community and did not immediately pick up the pace. That said, once being made acutely aware that this amount of work was not going to cut it, I spent nearly every day after that in the newsroom and pursuing stories with gusto.
I think my improvement since my last stint reporting at the Missourian was substantial, and the goal of honing my skills at writing longer stories was achieved. I have tried my best to recover from low output; I’ve written five stories since Thanksgiving — with more to come — and have been in near-daily contact with my editor. I believe I have earned a C.


(See the below for my final non-grade pitch post)

That's all she wrote (for now)

Well, it's been a fun and thought-provoking ride — hopefully for any reader's out there as well as myself.
This blog actually made me think twice about whether or not an online journal of this nature was really worthwhile. In the end, I think they are.
Not only do blogs have a level of personality that news may never be able to have, but they have a level of discussion as well that most news outlets have yet to achieve. There is something to be said about being able to bare our brain and soul onto a web site and have thier contents be up for discussion for any and all willing to read. With a level of reporting, blogs have become to column of the future without that stuffy newspaper feel. This blogging experience has led me to think that one of the aspects of my new prospective job as Online News Editor for a magazine need be reporter blogs. Examples like th Columbia Tribune really can't be denied their success and after feeling the liberation brought with writing a blog — a blog with relevant content and not just the day's idle thoughts — is an experience that I think can benefit writer's and readers alike.

That's all for now, folks. Please see the above (and last) post for my grade pitch.

A publication written by the audience, for the audience A.K.A. Stevens Second Suggestion

This past week has been all about websites this week; thinking about how to improve them and their content. Between my job interview with Wizard about the possibility of being brought on staff to help revamp the content and image of their website and Jane Ellen Stevens document critiqueing the Missourian, my mental process has been extremely web-centric of late. With that said, I think that many of Stevens criticisms aren’t only something that can be used at the Missourian (and I think many of them should start going into effect here, because there are some really great and progressive thoughts in this packet) but also shed some light on what I might suggest to Wizard in my follow-up job interview after they read the current pitch I have of how to revamp their site.

However, being a Missourian focused blog for the time-being, I would like to voice my opinion about how greatness of Steven’s second recommendation. The idea of a whole separate site/publication that is specifically directe at students and young people and covers music, bloggers, video games and the MU campus is genius. It isn’t just genius because most of Columbia’s similar sites (CoMoMusic.com, for example) aren’t very good sites, but because we have the single greatest asset in creating this type of site: competent students.
Not only could Columbia use a site like the one Stevens suggests, but we have more of an ear to the ground in this field than any Columbia publication could hope to have. Our reporters are entirely students who aren’t stuffy literary critics, jaded critiquers of music or video game reviewers with limitless budgets. We can review, report and discuss books, comics, video games, movies and music with a degree of authority but without completely alienating our audience. I love music, I love concerts, I love comics and I love video games. The New York Times may have some incredibly talented writers who I know are super-intelligent of the topics they write about, but when I read their reviews of concerts or articles about video games, I have to say they leave me lacking. They come across as the Academia view of things that people should just be able to describe as AWESOME (Yes, in all caps) and not with a string of adjectives that sound more condescending than relatable.
For a publication like this, we (college students) are truly our own audience. While we are young journalists learning to write about courthouses and school boards for the masses from ages 13 to 80, we are also the best candidates in this town with our journalistic training to be writing about Halo 3 and The Blue Note’s events. This is something we have to harness, because no other publication in town (or potentially in the country) can hope to compete with the fact that we would be writing articles for an audience we are part of; writing articles for ourselves.

Amazon.com's user modifications are THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS!

The future of newspapers, the near future at least, has been sitting in front of me for years and I never noticed till yesterday. The future lies in the way in which Amazon.com is set up for its users.
In order to use Amazon, you must register as a user. This is step one. After registering at Amazon, you can shop for things from any category and based on what pages you look at and what you purchase, a list of other recommendations (based on similarity of items and what other users also check after checking the item you check) is made. This list can then be viewed and modified by the user (by rating items you have bought, or by informing the site that you already own a certain item) and then better recommendations are given. Not only that, but recently, Amazon has added a feature that gives percentages of what people buy when they look at a certain page (i.e. 57% bought the item on this page, 13% bought item B, 10% bought item C, and so on). Lastly, users can start forum discussions on certain topics that can even be viewed from the forums of related topics/products so that buyer input can be seen for an item on its page and on the pages of related items. Also, users can rate useless comments that do not further the discussion, which are viewable, but not exposed in the conversation.
This is the format for the newspaper of the future.
Readers will register (for free or for a cost depending on publication). They will then search for news, and initial recommendations of other stories will be made, like “Other readers read the story on Monkeys you read, and then read this story on Zoos.” The website would take the stories viewed by a reader, based with the reader’s recommendations for readings and place those on the front page of the site when this user signed in. The front page would basically be custom made with the news that this person was most likely to read. The reader could of course search for other stories and viewing those would further customize his/her recommendations. The reader could also look at a list of recommended stories and rate how much they enjoyed them to further customize their experience.
Forums would be available for all stories, but users would vote on which comments were contributing and which were pointless insults and the good posts would be left while the bad posts would be removed.
Also, much like Amazon’s homepage will feature recommended products for me, it also tells me about certain sales and newly released items. In this way, the personalized “front page” of the website could feature mostly recommended stories but also have links to breaking news that the person might want to know about even if the news did not fall specifically under their recommendations that reflect their preferences.
Now, if people were to go online and use the website until a list of recommendations was pretty fleshed out for them, they could then select the option for a print version of the newspaper based on their recommendations to be sent to their house. Who wouldn’t read a print paper when they were assured to have it chock-full of stories that they know they would read anyway.
Basically, Amazon takes their user input (what their customers view, rate and buy) to tailor their webpage so that what pops up is something the consumer is most likely to purchase. News outlets can take this user input (what stories search, read, comment on or rate) to tailor their front page (be it wed or print) so that what is there is what are the stories each particular reader is most likely to read.
This would of course lead to some horrible science fiction future where advertisements begin be tailored specifically to consumers (“Hey Jim, I hear you have athlete’s foot…” etc) but it also could be used to give people the news they want immediately without having to sift through different web pages and web searches or multiple paper sections.

Dirty Jobs: The Discovery Channel's gain is ours as well!

I must admit, when I saw Monday’s front page I was near outrage. I saw the big Dirty Jobs label on the first story and was furious that the Missourian would so shamelessly rip off a brilliant idea by the Discovery Channel.
Then, I saw in the first sentence that the article immediately expressed that the week’s series was being completely “inspired”… er, *cough * ripped off…by the show, and all of a sudden I was completely pleased. All it took was a simple admittance of idea robbery (which, is of course, completely legal in this sense) and I was on board. I love Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel and I can’t believe just taking such a simple premise (I mean, the show was there for goodness sake) and putting it in the paper hadn’t dawned on me before.
In essence, this type of story has been written millions of times before. It’s a profile of someone who has an interesting job, but through that dirty twist on it, latch it onto a popular show and make it local and suddenly you are looking at the makings of a fantastic story. I have to give mad props and extreme kudos to the minds behind this idea. So simple, yet so effective. When I saw that Tuesday’s article would be about a Livestock Semen Inspector…well, I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard or looked forward to Tuesday’s paper so much…EVER!
So, what’s next…Mythbusters? I’ll take it on. Myth 1…how many MU students who kiss on the bridge in Peace Park actually get married? I broke up with my ex-girlfriend who I kissed on it, so Myth busted on my vote. How about, will the Tiger Mosaic ever be finished? Will Mizzou ever have a period where half the campus isn’t under construction? The possibilities are endless!
Missourian Deadliest Catch? The squirrels are game this season!
Mizzou How It’s Made. Focus on the history of the columns construction and the making of the bronzes on campus (Thom Jeff, Beetle Bailey, etc).
Like I said, the possibilities are endless and I haven’t even started working Animal Planet and History Channel shows into the equation yet.

Are we really listening to the public? Where is the data, survey results and public input? Or are we still just talking to each other?

I haven’t heard a play-by-play rundown of what happened at the retreat this summer with all the Missourian editors, but the more I hear about it — the changes made there and how the changes were made to better serve our readers — the more certain questions come to mind. These questions come to mind after a conversation held almost a month ago in our Journalism and Democracy Capstone class…
Our professor, Charles Davis, brought in Reuben Stern to give us a rundown of a lot of the new things that were being done at the Missourian with public interaction and the new web-based format. I had heard about a lot of this because I was in the advanced reporting class where we went over a lot of it, but Reuben started guiding the rest of the class through the new “comment” feature and other things. I don’t remember exactly how we got to this question — this all took place weeks in the past — but after continual remarks along the lines of “our readers have responded well to this” and “another thing we are doing to aid our readers that they seem to be picking up on,” (these are not direct quotes, just the gist of what led the question) Greg Gaia asked a very simple question. He asked whether data was actually being taken to gauge whether certain things on the web site were “working” to back up some of the generalizations we were all throwing around in our class discussion. The basic answer, at the time and I believe currently, was and is “No, we don’t have hard data to back this up.”
Today, in class, as we discussed staying in touch with the community — web-based or in person — and what we need to do to accomplish this, it brought me right back to the Greg’s question: what are we doing to gauge whether or not what we are doing now is “working” and how are we finding out where we are going wrong if it isn’t? I guess what I am really saying is, I keep hearing people in the newsroom and the J-School talk about how we need to become part of the conversation that the public is having, but did we even take the public’s voice into consideration when we made major changes to the way the paper works; changes that were made to better serve the public?
As far as I know, our current way of gathering information on whether the “new Missourian” is working better than the “old Missourian” is the same way we always have. We check the web-site and letters to the editor and gauge things from the limited public input we get. I am sure there is more going on, but none of it is hard data. I don’t know exactly what public input went into the change, but by all appearances and things I have heard, it seems to have been our thoughts on the public’s thoughts, not hard data. Now, it seems to be the same, we gauge our reactions and discuss them amongst ourselves instead of surveying the public or crunching numbers.
Now, I know we have surveyed readers in the past, but after the changes we have made, shouldn’t we be doing it again? Why not do something as simple as putting up a comprehensive web-survey asking the public what they think of the new Missourian and suggestions they might have? We could email it to all the registered comment users and we could advertise it on the front page. I believe we did this before, but why not do it again? I just feel like every conversation that we have about this talks about how we need to get off our high horse and down with the people and adjust to their needs, but it seems like we are still on our high horse looking down and guessing their needs. We keep talking about how journalists are talking to each other about the future of journalism and are doomed to fail because community journalism and blogs will run us out if we don't talk to the people, yet we keep having these conversations among ourselves without bringing any hard data from the public to our discussion. It just makes me wonder if anything has actually changed or if we are just saying it has and acting like it is true. I don’t think I will be convinced that things are changing according to the public’s needs until I see some hard data (survey results, sales numbers, web site hits, frequency of web site hits, etc) and some actual public input, because right now it still feels to me like we are up on our high horse talking about how to better things down on ground-level.

It's all about to boil over...

Well, time for a little self-reflection in my already late blog post…
The semester is more than halfway done and I just don’t know what else I should be doing. The two stories that I have done so far are some of the best I think I have ever written —http://www.columbiamissourian.com/media/multimedia/2007/pages/Comics/comics2.htm and http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2007/10/07/quinlan-keep-comic-book-store-close-end-october/ — but my current story that ties Midwest comic books to the national scene just isn’t quite coming along the way I wanted and after that I just don’t know exactly where to go. I know that Wizard Magazine, where I did my summer internship and one of my dream jobs, is looking at me for a job and if that doesn’t pan out I am heading to a career fair this week to try for more jobs, and I think that is the problem with my reporting. Earlier this semester, Missouri was what I was thinking about. I had been in New York all summer and I came back ready to make some waves at the Missourian and focus on some stories that I wanted to see in print for central Missouri. But now, things are coming to a close and all I can think about is how I don’t have a job yet and how that is the next most important thing and how I need to get that taken care of. I know there is always more that I can learn at Mizzou and more I can learn in Columbia, but right now, I just feel like the next step needs to happen in my life and I know that next step is a job. It’s just getting very hard to focus on that and try to focus on the present at the same time. Things are just getting a bit shaky and piling up and when I need to be buckling down more than ever, I feel like I need a vacation more than anything else.
Ah well…that said, I better get back to work. I got a ton of things to do.

Taking blogs for granted...the American Way!

For my journalism and democracy class this week, we were asked to comment on some readings by Ann Florini from “The Coming Democracy.” She started her book by talking about how the printing press being invented by Gutenberg was really the start of society and democracy. I have to agree that this really changed the world, but she also mentioned how the printing press had been invented in China hundreds of years before Gutenberg but had never taken off because they “weren’t ready” for the advancement. This lead to numerous questions about “why” and “how,” but in the end it led my to wonder about our current situation with a modern printing press like the blog.
The blog is a universal printing press, with the Internet as our medium. Gutenberg printed pages of the Bible, just like people can now chronicle their lives via the blog. The real question I have to ask, and Florini made me wonder about, is why we developed this modern printing press first. The answer followed quickly, as I realized that we have a great economical advance over many countries. This led to the thought of what the world would be like if the people in Darfur or the rest of Africa had the same access to blogs, or this type of mass “publication.”
It really made me wonder how much more the struggles of this region might be shown to the world if everyone there was able to blog. Instead of picking on senators who are having gay liaisons in airport stalls, we could be highlighting the problems with entire regions of the world. It really makes you think about what a luxury we have to be able to use blogs for a class assignment or to use as a diary, when they could be used to change whole regions of the globe if they only had the access to computers we have.

Halo 3: We looked like n00bs getting headshotted with our week multimedia coverage.

Well, I have a rant today, and though it is about a week late, I still think it’s a valid rant subject.
Last week, Halo 3 came out. Now, this isn’t just business news. This game broke the record for all multimedia sales in a single day, breaking its own record set by Halo 2. That is some crazy worldwide news that has a huge effect on Columbia, since — as our article pointed out — people were lined up in droves throughout the night in front of every store that sold the game.

Now, I thought the reporter who handled the article actually did a great job. Quotes were gathered from multiple locations all over Columbia and the written section did a great job of capturing the craziness of this game premiere. Where we fell off was with the photo and the multimedia.

The two photos that accompanied the article were taken at Tiger Tech, on campus. Yes, it was the biggest game preorder in the store’s history, but when you have an article that is talking about businesses all over Columbia and the world, getting two pictures from Tiger Tech on campus seems lazy and doesn’t compliment the article the way it could. I know we aren’t the New York Times and couldn’t feature Halo 3 premiere photos from Japan, LA and New York City, but I think we could have done better than just Tiger tech.

Next, with numerous expensive video equipment around the newsroom now, I was hoping to go to the website and see tons of multimedia footage from gameplay video to interviews in line with different people from every store in Columbia. You’ve got pandemonium all over town, people in costumes and camping out, and while we have words that let people know that, we could have gotten some awesome video. We had 2 minutes of footage from Tiger Tech that aired a day or two after the article. Heck, I may be in advanced reporting, but gimme a call and say, “Yo Jim, you wanna take a camera out and interview some crazy Halo fanatics in line tonite for some online multimedia stuff.” “Heck yeah, sounds like a blast,” I’d say. Throw in a story credit or two for my final grade and we could have had every camera the newsroom owns out getting mad footage of this bonkers event. We could have at least linked some gameplay video from You Tube to the website.

All I’m saying is this was about the easiest event ever for us to go hog wild on multimedia with and we came up real short. You can’t get really fun stuff like this from school board and city council and when we finally get the chance to really go all out with the new toys I have been hearing about and really give our small town a cool local taste of an international story, we come up short with nothing but Tiger Tech stuff that makes this look like a Mizzou story and that’s it. Kudos to the reporter who did capture the feel of the event and hysteria on a local and international level, but man, we gotta back up a good story like that with the multimedia and photo to show this story isn’t just words, its an account of craziness that rarely visits this small town.

Ok…rant over.

Techknowledgeable...over-rated in today's room?

I think that the current heads, at any level, of media are very easily won over by the idea of a young person who has a handle on things in technology that come to us quite easily.
I really shouldn’t be complaining. The fact that I am knowledgeable, if even just a little bit, about certain aspects of computers that are boggling to older newsmen and women make me stand out as “the future of journalism.” However, I wonder if this faith in the technologically knowledgeable is just a blind hope in finding this new and great “future of journalism.” Sure, I had a blog four years ago and I know how to defragment a computer and I was making powerpoints in middle school, but I am not sure that makes me any more knowledgeable about how to keep journalism on its feet for the years to come.
The ideals of journalism — the truth, delivery of information and all of the SPJ code — are all good notions that can’t really be expanded on by a relative amateur in the field like myself. Sure, I can program my DVD/VCR player with ease, but does that make suitable to address the ethical ramifications of a changing journalistic world? Maybe it does, I’m not really sure. I know that my good friend Frank Johnson was able to convince his bosses at the Lake Sun Leader in Camdenton Missouri to give him a video game column and not only has that allowed for what could one day be a prolific voice in the industry to get his words out on the web but it could be a step towards the future for the whole paper. It’s a curious balance, but one that I think merits a thought here and there about where journalism and technology meet back on the other side.

Isn't it a pity...when you can't reach who you want?

Today I spent over an hour on hold trying to get my insurance renewed only to be told that everyone who could help me was busy and they would have to call me back tomorrow…can anyone else smell a rant coming? (Wait, who am I kidding, only one person reads this blog and, either way, I have no idea what a rant smells like either)
This is an instance of horrible customer service. I am calling to do something that must be done in the near future so that my insurance can be renewed or revoked. I called and wasn’t dealt with. Due to a lack of staffing at this call center that is supposed to handle my situation I may not be able to hear whether my insurance is renewed before my current insurance runs out at month’s end. Needless to say, it was supremely infuriating.
Now, take this situation and apply it to a newsroom, especially the supremely staffed Missourian newsroom. We have — guesstimating — at least 30 writers in the office a day along with other staff, and what is the best way to get in touch with the paper? Letters to the editor and comments at the end of stories or, if you’re very lucky, you can call and ask for the reporter and they may be in. It reminds me of my hours on hold today. If I am someone who has something to say about a story that hit yesterday, I might not be able to be heard and if I was, it might not be for a while. I might have a lead to follow up on a story or I might have a correction. I know we have many ways for people to get in contact with us as a paper, but maybe it would serve our readers better if they had more ways to reach us as individuals. I would love to hear the good or bad things people had to say about my stories. Due to that fact, I would be all for putting a personal, or Missourian specific, email below my stories instead of news@columbiamissourian.com. Just a thought I had to avoid “phone-hold” exasperation.

Is now the time for getting those 18 to 24's back into newspaper reading?!

This week in lecture, I suffered an embarrassing moment when I was asked to make a list of things that I thought were “good” and “bad” about the past week of Missourians. I read the Missourian here and there, but frankly find it hard to motivate myself to pick it up everyday. Most of the time when I do pick it up everyday and attempt to read the whole thing is when I am working at the Missourian and my grade is dependent on knowing what is going on in Columbia.
What is my point? I guess I just feel like the Missourian is not an “essential” publication for students at the University of Missouri who are not J-School folk, or at least they don’t think it is. I am not being critical for the sake of criticism, but I don’t feel like many people find it necessary to read the paper that are among the ages of 18-24 and who are likely at Mizzou.
No, this isn’t a big life-changing statement or industry-saving announcement and probably isn’t news to anyone who practices journalism. It is no secret that readership among college aged students isn’t very high and I don’t talk to many students outside the J-school who could make an argument against that point.
So, I just wonder if being at one of the world’s most prestigious J-schools with a ready test group of students at MU doesn’t require us to make some more drastic steps to figure out how to draw this age group in to reading the paper. Once again, I am aware that many within the J-School are performing surveys and studies and writing essays that try to explain and solve this problem, but doesn’t the Missourian provide these researchers with an amazing tool?
If one research group found out that this college-aged group got a certain percentage of news online versus from the paper, the website at the Missourian would allow us to experiment with where we place what news. Not many 18 to 24-year-olds at MU have kids in Columbia’s Public Schools, so maybe a story about tuition going up or a hot band coming to Jesse Hall would be a better thing to run higher up on the website than the new High School location. This is just an example, and one that is unfounded in research, but it is simply to help me try and make my point.
With all the changes we are making at the Missourian right now, wouldn’t this be a great time to try out any ideas that might be geared toward making our paper as essential to college students outside the J-School as well as the ones inside it? I am not claiming to be an expert on how to do it, but it just seems that with so many changes going on, now might be the time to at least think about how to change the paper/website to bring that group back into the fold.

If I start having a manifesto/motto, this may as well be it...for my blog, at least!

After posting two "essays" written by me about how I think technology and the internet aren’t being used well enough in most journalism today and how this communication and transparency between the media and the citizenry is all part of the future and all for the best.

Phew…that was a helluva sentence!

Anywho, that said, I figured I should explain a bit about my “manifesto” or “motto” for my blog.

First off, I used my personal e-mail address and even my real name on the blog for a reason. If anyone is that impressive of a web-surfer to find this blog or if I continue to use it after my Advanced Reporting class, I thought that people should know that this page is written by me. As I have stated in the past —though, maybe not on this blog— I think that it is high time for all journalists, not just the web journalists or other web-savvy ones, to step out of their ivory tower of editorial pages and offices and really communicate with people. I think the Internet is an amazing place for this to happen, because anyone from any corner of the globe can find my articles on the web, so why shouldn’t they be able to talk to me like the coffee shop owner down Ninth Street could? On top of that, some folk just aren’t confrontational people though their thoughts and critiques may be. I don’t want to lose those peoples’ points of view, just cause they don’t want to call me or see me face-to-face. So, part one of my blog’s goal in a nutshell, it may be online but it isn’t any less me.

Secondly and simply, I’m going to be honest. It may sound cheesy, but I was taught that honesty is the best policy and my whole life has reinforced that fact for me. This blog is going to demonstrate the same thing, no matter what.

Alright, with that out of the way, let me officially welcome any and all readers out there to (insert kitschy and catchy blog name here…) No Fear of a Well-Informed Planet by Jim Gibbons.

News outlets should be shaping the future online

For my capstone class — Journalism and Democracy taught by Charles Davis — he asked us to write an essay with the prompt, "Where is journalism headed? What is our role? Informer? Educator?" My response to this essay ties directly into my pitch/argument about the web forum for the Missuourian, so I am posting it here...

"When thinking about the future of journalism, you don’t have to look very far. With today’s technology, the simple answer to the question is the Internet. The Internet doesn’t only allow news to be posted immediately as it happens, but with the advent of wireless Internet and the shrinking of the technology you can access it with — the iPhone, for example — there really isn’t a better answer. What could be faster than the Internet and getting news right after you have walked out your door for work? Sure, something will come up that will be faster, but the Internet will have paved the way for it and therefore thinking of plans for journalism involving the Internet should be a pretty safe plan. The real question what role professional journalists will play in this online future.
Since there shouldn’t be much argument about the Internet being the main direction journalism is headed, the journalistic community must take a role as a leader in this field. Sadly, it’s really too late for journalists to pave the way on the internet that bloggers have already tread a visible path on, but that doesn’t mean the professional journalism community cannot still lead. The job for journalists now is to set the example. A person speaking through a blog can be any Tom, Dick or Harry who knows how to fill in a few basic steps on the blogger website. These “unprofessional” bloggers can make claims without reference and say whatever they want, but through the actions of many competent bloggers the bar for a respectable blog has, so far, remained high.
The problem with these respectable blogs is that they may be good, but they still aren’t quite good enough to pass as top-notch journalism in most cases. This is where the journalists come in: By blogging and setting the bar for a blog even higher, journalists can really set a new trend for what is top-notch in the blog world. By applying a sound journalistic process to their blogs, journalists can set a standard in the blog world that they set in the print medium and can then translate this into other online phenomena.
After spending the summer working at Wizard Entertainment where our website had an online forum, I saw that this could easily be the town meeting of the future. The subject was comic books and movies, but I could see how this online format could be used so efficiently to talk about national politics, town meetings or even the best hairdressers in town with a large community of people. The problem with most of these forums is a lack of mediation by a responsible person that keeps things from becoming an online shouting match or “bitch-fest” and keep the forum community on topic and civil. Here again is where the journalist comes into play. By understanding the facets of editing, the journalist is perfectly suited to moderate these forums in a way that can take them from Internet junk to the future of civic communication.
The bottom line is that journalists aren’t innovators. We never seem to be the first ones who catch onto something, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get on the bandwagon at a turning point where we can help sculpt certain innovations into great outlets for information. We can’t guarantee the role of informer, because the future will certainly prove that other people who are simply closer can get the information out faster. We need to give them an example for their blog or website that can be followed so that quality news is produced as a result. We are the educator and the sculptor. We can help to mold these new technologies into things that can be used for the good of information sharing and not as rant-and-rave online communities. That is our best hope at playing an integral role in the future of information: to get on the train, even late, and keep it on track and not flying off the rails."

I hope that this more thoroughly illustrates my points on a greater need to have professional journalism get up to speed on the internet and then keep at that pace. We may not be able to lead, but that is no reason to fall behind.

Web Forum for the Missourian

I sent along this pitch to Columbia Missourian Executive Editor Tom Warhover after a conversation in our Advanced Reporting class. The message was sent around to other editors and the class, so I figured I'd make everyone privy to the pitch, so...dig in, if you feel inclined...

"Tom,
I thought my pitch for the web forum might be better heard and understood if I just typed it out.

The forum would be a fairly simple set up, where larger sections (much like the paper itself) such as Muse or News or Sports would feature more precise threads below them. The more precise threads would be comprised of the stories written and threads created by staff and community members about things that were not direct stories in the paper.

If someone were to read a story, they could still click on the “comment” link, but instead of posting a random comment to the story and that being the end of it, it would lead to a comment section on the forum. This way, instead of just leaving a comment, these people could read this article and go to a conversation, or, if they choose, leave just a regular comment within the forum and be done with it. In this way, stories we wrote could have conversations among the public about the news in them and the reporter could get involved and answer questions, clarify, and possibly even get tips from people who might suggest a person or place that would be very relevant to a story follow-up that the reporter and editors never thought of.

Now, people who create their own posts would be able to create them about anything. Instead of all the talk about the location of the new High School falling under one story’s thread, someone could make a thread where all that conversation could occur. Plus, instead of having people making comments on stories on our site, then the Trib’s, then another one, well…having an open forum on our site would make it the place to be for these convos and also a great resource for the whole community. Also, within these threads that are made but not directly linked to a story, we could do our critiques and get public feedback (i.e. “Why wasn’t the river story on the front page?”) and answer them (i.e. “We felt the issue of street taxes was more important for these reasons…”) and then they could continue the convo (i.e. “I see your point, however, I think the river story would have been better there for these reasons…”). We don’t have to listen to and obey all that they say, but it would certainly give us more perspective of what the people want and need than just discussing it amongst ourselves in the office.

The only downside/catch is that the forum is a privilege and not a right. If people were coming on and posting lewd topics and such, they would have to be banned and would not be able to post. The forum would always be free to read, so people who didn’t sign up (sign up would be done by registering a user name which could be fake or real and registering an email address) could still read the content, but people who would misuse it wouldn’t deter mature folks who cared about Columbia.

But in the end, I think this is an idea that would make us a very accessible publication with a level of clarity and transparency that we would struggle to deliver with just print and Internet coverage. It can be a place where people come to get all their news, by reading stories and peoples’ comments, and it can simply be an online community center where the people who care enough can get online and really participate in civic discussions with their fellows citizens and with the journalists who write about them. Think of it almost as an on-going online town meeting where the floor is open to everyone.

During my summer internship at Wizard Magazine (an admittedly nerdy publication) we were encouraged to pay close attention to our web forum and post frequently. Granted, our subject matter was usually tamer with comics and movies being the order of the day, but still, we created threads to feedback on the last issue and on stories and even heard many suggestions for what we could do better, or if we were getting criticisms, we could explain ourselves. Here is a link to that forum, just so you can get a feel of what I am thinking…

http://wizarduniverse.invisionzone.com/
It was a great experience using it (I still do, by the way) and it was a great tool for us to communicate with our readers. It is a very friendly forum, and one covering Columbia’s issues could get heated and would need moderation by our staff to make sure conversation didn’t get hateful, but it could be the best thing we ever did to really hear what our community has to say.

Ok, hopefully that all made sense. I just didn’t feel like people really got what I was going for today and I wanted to make sure that I at least got to present to you the idea that was in my head. I hope it all came out cohesively enough for you to get what I mean."

I think something like this is long overdue for press outlets. We preach conversation and transparency, it's time to practice it more fully in ways we haven't before.