By CHARLYNE BERENS
Ideas? Oh, yes! Firm answers? Not so much.
Panelists and speakers at the Feb. 12 conference at the Paley Center in New York City brought innovative ideas and thoughtful speculation to bear on the challenges facing the media and journalism educators.
Seven faculty and four students represented CoJMC, connecting with faculty and students from the other 11 schools that are part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative and absorbing the information and ideas that made up the program.
(Foreground, 3rd from left): Michelle Hassler and Carla Kimbrough attended several sessions during the workshop
Here is a recap of the sessions:
The hunt for the newsroom of tomorrow
Personalization, localization and stronger relationships with audiences were among the prescriptions for tomorrow’s newsroom.
Personalization has both an upside and a downside, said Josh Cohen, senior business product manager for Google News. The downside is that people can easily choose to read only what they want to read and ignore other important news. The upside is that customization “helps people keep control over their experience.”
Localization is one niche the media should focus on, said Martin Moe, senior vice president, AOL Media. Businesses like AOL are doing quality national coverage. Instead of fighting that, local media should focus on local news, he said.
Adam Wagler helped represent CoJMC at the conference
And journalists need to relate closely to their audiences, said Allan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive editor, online, for The Wall Street Journal.
“The best journalists are in constant contact with the people they write for and care what those people want to know about,” Murray said.
He added, “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t pay attention to traffic numbers (for online sites). We must pay attention to what readers want.”
That may include allowing and encouraging the audience to contribute to the news. Asked whether that meant that journalists were ceding the journalistic function to their audiences, Murray said yes — to a point. He said amateur journalists’ work will only contribute to, not take the place of, professional journalistic work. He added that involving users in producing journalism should not mean lowering content standards.
Moe said AOL is looking everywhere for talent. He talked about a “distributed newsroom” in which people from a variety of locations contribute to the news content.
But in a world awash in sources of news and information, how does a reader know which to trust? Brand matters more than ever, Moe said.
“The best way to judge the quality of information is to know the brand.”
Advice for journalism students
- Journalists today must be fluent across all platforms. (Murray, The Wall Street Journal)
- They must be able to multi-task, to produce short but well-written nuggets of information. (Eliot Pierce, vice president for advertising and digital strategy, business development and ad operations for The New York Times)
- Journalists must be able to take an entrepreneurial approach to getting a job and telling stories. (Cohen, Google)
- But they must still be able to add to a story, check facts and get things right. That’s what brings people back to a site. (Moe, AOL)
- Journalists must become experts in a particular subject or category of news to differentiate themselves from the crowd. (Moe, AOL)
Journalism outputs and inputs
Journalism is changing from a closed to an open world of information, said Ed Pilkington, New York bureau chief for the British newspaper The Guardian. News organizations should relate to readers and stay open to them.
The Guardian is currently wondering how much video adds to its website.
“We don’t do video as well as television does,” he said.
The publication is looking for a different, more original approach.
On the other hand, live blogging has been very successful, particularly with sports and breaking news.
On the input side, more people are contributing to the news, he said. The Guardian has used social media to enlist local correspondents, linking to their information. The paper notes that the information presented has not been confirmed. And sometimes editors hold information for verification before posting it or linking to it.
The Guardian has taken a relatively relaxed approach to media change, he said. The paper isn’t sure where all of the change will lead but isn’t as worried as many U.S. media appear to be, he said.
Education of the entrepreneurial journalist
Journalism is not what it used to be. But panelists suggested some priorities for journalism students today:
The basics — writing and reporting — plus business courses on the economics of media, said Rafat Ali, editor/publisher of ContentNext Media. Rafat said he defines journalism as an information business that includes news, data, gossip – a constant feed of information.
Phil Balboni, president and CEO of GlobalPost.com, said digital should be the core of everything. He said divisions between different platforms should disappear. Students must also learn entrepreneurship and the business of news, he said.
John Harris, editor in chief of Politico.com, agreed. Students must understand the search for workable business models to support the new journalism, he said, and must consider themselves free agents, ready to carve out their own niches.
And, Balboni said, they should build their own brands and be sales people for their own product — being careful where to draw the line between producing content and selling it.
Journalists must care about reaching an audience, said Geneva Overholser, director of the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California. They should become marketers and understand things like Web analytics. Better relations with the audience actually helps serve democracy by making journalism more inclusive, she said.
What really matters, she added, is how the audience defines quality journalism. She said she wasn’t worried about linking to or including information from people or organizations with their own points of view as long as that point of view was made transparent to the audience.
Reaching the audience in a fragmented media landscape
Audiences and niches were themes again in this discussion. Bill Adair, founder of PolitiFact.com, said his site had found its niche as an honest broker, a fact-checker in the world of political claims and counterclaims.
Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer for Turner Broadcasting System, said good journalism is good business. If a news outlet gives people things to talk about, it makes them feel smarter, and they’re likely to come back for more.
Rachel Davis Mersey, of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, said people use information to feel as good about themselves as they can. They have different social identities and choose particular media to be better at those identities. Sometimes it’s hard news that makes them feel good.
She said journalists must listen to their audiences to figure out how to meet their needs.
“’Feel good’ equals why people watch you,” she said.
Panelists generally agreed that journalists make a false distinction between pure reporting and pure opinion. Ted Anthony of the Associated Press said journalists should quit talking about being objective and, instead, use the term “unbiased.”
But with an increasingly fragmented audience, how can journalists be sure vital information is spread? It’s always been hard to get people to pay attention, Adair said. Media should use the Web to make news more appealing.
He did see a potential problem for democracy in that the Web makes it so easy for people to seek out opinions that simply reinforce their own. It’s important for public civility that people have contact with ideas they don’t agree with, he said.
Panelists expressed varied opinions about whether media can or should charge for online news. Adair said the notion of a “pay wall” goes against the traditions of the Web but added that journalists do need to figure out a way to financially support quality journalism.
Wakshlag said if some publications put up a pay wall, the free media will benefit.
“If you charge, you will be less influential,” he said. “Your audience will shrink, and so will your income.”
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