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.