The director of another college communications department in the office where I work came to my office on Tuesday looking puzzled. He was carrying an older issue of the student newspaper I advise. As I often see people carrying that newspaper and looking puzzled, I wasn't alarmed.
"So," he said, "Did you read this?"
I draw in a deep breath to start my well-rehearsed spiel about how I do not read the paper before it is printed because that isn't ethical and ... I realize he's pointing to a word in a letter to the editor. And that word is "Wikipedia." In the letter, a student is pointing out an error in a previous student newspaper article. The letter-writer suggests that the newspaper editors should have looked at Wikipedia.
"Do you think they get the irony here?" he asked me.
"No. I don't," I said, sighing.
He looked at me puzzled.
"People don't know what they don't care to know. And obviously, people don't care to know that Wikipedia isn't exactly 100% credible."
He mumbles something about teenagers, and I shot him a look. "No, no, adults too."
He rolls his eyes, obviously remembering adults, seemingly informationally-savvy adults that are also swindled by Wikipedia.
I pull Andrew Keen's book from my bag and hold it out to him. In what felt like a spiritual moment in the religion of information, he took it.
"He understands," I said.
My visitor returned yesterday, singing Keen's praises. I said hold on, look at this. I showed him where yesterday, BoingBoing.com called Keen a "professional troll and spokesdouche for internet-fearing reactionaries."
We discussed, and realized that yeah, of course BoingBoing is going to react that way, because BoingBoing's whole position is Internet=everything great about culture. It's almost as if your position defines your opinions on everything. I'm a journalist, a dyed-in-the-wool pen-and-paper journalist, so of course I think the Internet is a bit overrated. But I'm charged with churning out the next generation of journalists because I'm a newspaper adviser (and now also an English professor), so doesn't that position demand I be a steward of technology, no matter how useless it might be?
Bottom line: it's bells-and-whistles vs. meat-and-potatoes. Until they can figure out how to fill those Internet bells with meat, I'm not buying.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Monday, August 6, 2007
the unpopular opinion (paper) DRAFT
This is a rough draft of a position-type editorial article for people who do my job: college media advisers. My goal was to argue the unpopular side of a popular argument, that college media needs to produce many different types of media in their newsgathering and presentation functions (i.e. web video, audio and story packages) for every story. Please note that not only is this a draft (my opinions and support statements aren't 100% fleshed out), this is not an attack on any of the people mentioned, but a discussion of their ideas and my ideas.
Bryan Murley is a man on a mission. Since a last-minute session at the fall college media conference in 2005, Murley has been the go-to guy for all things new media. His blog, Innovation in College Media, has become required reading for college media advisers everywhere and his analysis of emerging trends in new media convergence in college news operations are spot on. Just yesterday he reminded us we need to have some sort of video plan for our reporters and photojournalists right now. Anybody can see that much of consumer newsgathering is done on the web nowadays, or at least, not in the ink-and-paper newspaper format, but does that necessarily mean college newspapers need to become multiplatform multimedia news delivery systems overnight? Or at all?
Labeled as anti-technology in 2007 is definitely an unpopular place to be. Nobody knows this better than Andrew Keen. His book “The Cult of the Amateur” has put him on the hit list of every pro-Web blogger and commentator on the Web, but his opinions and ideas are at least giving people something to think about as they forage ahead into new media territory. Keen’s theory is simple: more voices does not necessarily equal quality information. He frequently compares the “chatter” on the Internet to T.H. Huxley’s “infinite monkey theorem,” where infinite monkeys have infinite typewriters and one eventually creates a masterpiece. In the pre-Internet age (T.H. Huxley died in 1895), the concept of infinite monkeys on typewriters seemed like a mathematical joke, but now, with the Internet, it seems more like a sad metaphor. Keen says this joke has become a reality. We are the monkeys, chattering away on our typewriters, but none of us are creating a masterpiece yet. It should be noted here that T.H.’s grandson, Aldous Huxley, wrote the dystopian future in the novel Brave New World in 1932.
Keen’s argument goes on for more than 200 pages, showing us the crimes committed by Web 2.0 against talent, authorship, intellectual property laws, musicianship, advertising revenue and journalists. Journalists, traditionally educated craftsmen, are being muscled out because … well, because of a lot of things. They’re fond of blaming the Internet. Craigslist and Yahoo are stealing their ad revenue, which pays their salaries. Wikipedia and celebrity gossip sites are stealing their readers. Google News is taking their content. The Economist says that over the next few decades, half of the newspapers will go under. Keen bundles this idea by attacking the most famous newspaper in the United States: The New York Times. According to Michael Wolff, a journalist, for the Times to generate its print revenue, they’d either have to reach 400-500 million online readers or compromise their editorial content to please potential advertisers. Granted, this is The New York Times, not your average university weekly tabloid. But not even the Times would able to seamlessly abandon it’s paper pages for web pages “At best,” Wolff says,” it might become a specialized Internet player … a low-end, high-volume information producer.” What does that sound like? Oh yeah, Wikipedia.
Even the most thorough and cutting-edge Webophiles will confess to having their doubts about Wikipedia. If you’re looking for the infinite monkey theorem at work, this is where to find it. It’s flaw, however, isn’t that it can be edited by anyone from Harvard professors to Harvard janitors, but that it doesn’t take any particular talent to contribute. Journalists are celebrated for their storytelling ability and creativity. How you tell a story is your selling point. That you can tell it better than anybody else is your ticket to a journalism job. Wikipedia fails here because it doesn’t really tell stories, and those it does tell, like Wikipedia entries on news and current events, are dull, bland, play-by-play lists devoid of any sort of analysis or insight. Why? Because analysis and insight aren’t appropriate for the encyclopedia medium. There’s an old saying in radio, from back when most news couldn’t be reported live on the radio, that they can just wait a day and make it analysis. Are we sacrificing the analysis to get things earlier? Is that worth it? Is this happening in college media? Is that worth it?
Lots of people think so. Journalism professors and college media advisers alike seem to agree that loading their students with as many different skills possible will make them more viable in the shrinking journalism job market. Ryan Sholin, a new media blogger and graduate student at San Jose State University says it’s clear, “J-schools can either play a critical role in training the next generation of journalists, or they can fade into irrelevancy.” That’s a steep order. He also says “Reporters need to do more than write. The new world calls for a new skill set, and you and Mr. Notebook need to make some new friends, like Mr. Microphone and Mr. Point & Shoot.” Steeper still. Think of your average journalism-school freshman. Jenny Freshman wrote a few articles for her high school paper and wants to be a journalism student to refine her writing skills. Too bad. Jenny has to be a radio producer, photographer, videographer, anchor, editor, web designer and maybe do some writing in between. The jack-of-all-trades journalist model might be appropriate for a senior student looking at job options, but for the freshman, or the first-time contributor to a college student newspaper, it isn’t a realistic starting place.
The flip-side negative of being a jack-of-all-trades, like some believe all journalists (or at least journalists that will keep their jobs in the next ten years) should become, is that it’s hard to focus and refine a skill when you’re always trying to add more. Plus, it’s hard to develop new skills without strong foundation skills. Let’s go back to Jenny Freshman, who’s trying to write her first lead. In a supportive learning environment, she should get ample time to craft a strong print lead, through thorough trial-and-error. Once she gets that skill, it’s a lot easier to then teach her to modify that lead for radio or television or the web. It’s harder to try to teach leads across platforms because you have no foundation skill (like writing a print lead) to build from. Just like this lead example, in early reporting classes, students should be learning how to tell stories the easiest way, through writing, just like they’ve been writing essays and papers throughout their educational careers. By building on those skills, early print reporting classes can help transition students into journalistic writing. Once they get a solid foundation in journalistic storytelling, they can easily translate those skills into different media. Another drawback of this jack-of-all-trades model is the lack of specialization. There’s no reward for being exceptionally good at any journalistic skill if everyone is expected to be competent in many areas. For example, when I was in journalism school, I was a good reporter, but only a mediocre copy editor. Luckily, I knew people that were and we could help each other. There is something to be said for specialization and roles in team projects. If you worked at a newspaper, the same staff member wouldn’t be taking the photos, writing the stories, designing the paper, cleaning the office and selling the ads. It makes more sense for the best photographer to take the photos, the best designer to layout the pages and the best salespeople to sell the ads. Plus, it gives people, especially students, a sense of identity to figure out what area they’re best at and what area they want to pursue. This way they can focus their energy and really excel in that area, instead of being too busy trying to be competent in everything.
As educators, we also must be mindful of what the students want out of the experience. This is different at every college. A journalism-school student at a large public school with an established daily college paper may need, or want, skills that a student editor at a weekly tabloid at a fine arts college may not. Likewise, students at that large university may expect different things from their college newspaper than students at the small art college. Advisers are always preaching audience appropriateness, and it should extend even to this area. If your student body wants in-depth, multimedia coverage of campus events, give it to them. But if your students aren’t interested, and would just like a newspaper to read while they’re waiting for class to start, you shouldn’t do unnecessary work that won’t be appreciated. Additionally, this work could detract effort from your existing product, and further harm your relationship to your readers. The readers come first, and in college student media, it’s easier to find out what they want. As advisers and educators, though, we must also uphold certain standards of quality. If students aren’t building their foundational skills as writers and reporters, we must be the ones to help them focus. Like Keen says, having more monkeys at more typewriters (and in this case, additional monkeys with typewriters, cameras, videocameras, audio recorders and web design software) doesn’t necessarily mean quality work will come out of it. Quality is the top priority here, and producing quality work should be every student media organization’s goal.
Even if you don’t agree with everything Keen has to say, hopefully you can agree with this. Keen says, early on, “Talent, as ever is a limited resource, the needle in today’s digital haystack.” Is our obligation as college media advisers to make those needles, or the haystack of mediocrity? Is our obligation to make signal or noise? Is our profession going to literally be in the hands of the typewriting monkeys? We have the power to stop this from happening. We have the power to train the new generation to be needles instead of hay, and, more importantly, to know the difference.
Bryan Murley is a man on a mission. Since a last-minute session at the fall college media conference in 2005, Murley has been the go-to guy for all things new media. His blog, Innovation in College Media, has become required reading for college media advisers everywhere and his analysis of emerging trends in new media convergence in college news operations are spot on. Just yesterday he reminded us we need to have some sort of video plan for our reporters and photojournalists right now. Anybody can see that much of consumer newsgathering is done on the web nowadays, or at least, not in the ink-and-paper newspaper format, but does that necessarily mean college newspapers need to become multiplatform multimedia news delivery systems overnight? Or at all?
Labeled as anti-technology in 2007 is definitely an unpopular place to be. Nobody knows this better than Andrew Keen. His book “The Cult of the Amateur” has put him on the hit list of every pro-Web blogger and commentator on the Web, but his opinions and ideas are at least giving people something to think about as they forage ahead into new media territory. Keen’s theory is simple: more voices does not necessarily equal quality information. He frequently compares the “chatter” on the Internet to T.H. Huxley’s “infinite monkey theorem,” where infinite monkeys have infinite typewriters and one eventually creates a masterpiece. In the pre-Internet age (T.H. Huxley died in 1895), the concept of infinite monkeys on typewriters seemed like a mathematical joke, but now, with the Internet, it seems more like a sad metaphor. Keen says this joke has become a reality. We are the monkeys, chattering away on our typewriters, but none of us are creating a masterpiece yet. It should be noted here that T.H.’s grandson, Aldous Huxley, wrote the dystopian future in the novel Brave New World in 1932.
Keen’s argument goes on for more than 200 pages, showing us the crimes committed by Web 2.0 against talent, authorship, intellectual property laws, musicianship, advertising revenue and journalists. Journalists, traditionally educated craftsmen, are being muscled out because … well, because of a lot of things. They’re fond of blaming the Internet. Craigslist and Yahoo are stealing their ad revenue, which pays their salaries. Wikipedia and celebrity gossip sites are stealing their readers. Google News is taking their content. The Economist says that over the next few decades, half of the newspapers will go under. Keen bundles this idea by attacking the most famous newspaper in the United States: The New York Times. According to Michael Wolff, a journalist, for the Times to generate its print revenue, they’d either have to reach 400-500 million online readers or compromise their editorial content to please potential advertisers. Granted, this is The New York Times, not your average university weekly tabloid. But not even the Times would able to seamlessly abandon it’s paper pages for web pages “At best,” Wolff says,” it might become a specialized Internet player … a low-end, high-volume information producer.” What does that sound like? Oh yeah, Wikipedia.
Even the most thorough and cutting-edge Webophiles will confess to having their doubts about Wikipedia. If you’re looking for the infinite monkey theorem at work, this is where to find it. It’s flaw, however, isn’t that it can be edited by anyone from Harvard professors to Harvard janitors, but that it doesn’t take any particular talent to contribute. Journalists are celebrated for their storytelling ability and creativity. How you tell a story is your selling point. That you can tell it better than anybody else is your ticket to a journalism job. Wikipedia fails here because it doesn’t really tell stories, and those it does tell, like Wikipedia entries on news and current events, are dull, bland, play-by-play lists devoid of any sort of analysis or insight. Why? Because analysis and insight aren’t appropriate for the encyclopedia medium. There’s an old saying in radio, from back when most news couldn’t be reported live on the radio, that they can just wait a day and make it analysis. Are we sacrificing the analysis to get things earlier? Is that worth it? Is this happening in college media? Is that worth it?
Lots of people think so. Journalism professors and college media advisers alike seem to agree that loading their students with as many different skills possible will make them more viable in the shrinking journalism job market. Ryan Sholin, a new media blogger and graduate student at San Jose State University says it’s clear, “J-schools can either play a critical role in training the next generation of journalists, or they can fade into irrelevancy.” That’s a steep order. He also says “Reporters need to do more than write. The new world calls for a new skill set, and you and Mr. Notebook need to make some new friends, like Mr. Microphone and Mr. Point & Shoot.” Steeper still. Think of your average journalism-school freshman. Jenny Freshman wrote a few articles for her high school paper and wants to be a journalism student to refine her writing skills. Too bad. Jenny has to be a radio producer, photographer, videographer, anchor, editor, web designer and maybe do some writing in between. The jack-of-all-trades journalist model might be appropriate for a senior student looking at job options, but for the freshman, or the first-time contributor to a college student newspaper, it isn’t a realistic starting place.
The flip-side negative of being a jack-of-all-trades, like some believe all journalists (or at least journalists that will keep their jobs in the next ten years) should become, is that it’s hard to focus and refine a skill when you’re always trying to add more. Plus, it’s hard to develop new skills without strong foundation skills. Let’s go back to Jenny Freshman, who’s trying to write her first lead. In a supportive learning environment, she should get ample time to craft a strong print lead, through thorough trial-and-error. Once she gets that skill, it’s a lot easier to then teach her to modify that lead for radio or television or the web. It’s harder to try to teach leads across platforms because you have no foundation skill (like writing a print lead) to build from. Just like this lead example, in early reporting classes, students should be learning how to tell stories the easiest way, through writing, just like they’ve been writing essays and papers throughout their educational careers. By building on those skills, early print reporting classes can help transition students into journalistic writing. Once they get a solid foundation in journalistic storytelling, they can easily translate those skills into different media. Another drawback of this jack-of-all-trades model is the lack of specialization. There’s no reward for being exceptionally good at any journalistic skill if everyone is expected to be competent in many areas. For example, when I was in journalism school, I was a good reporter, but only a mediocre copy editor. Luckily, I knew people that were and we could help each other. There is something to be said for specialization and roles in team projects. If you worked at a newspaper, the same staff member wouldn’t be taking the photos, writing the stories, designing the paper, cleaning the office and selling the ads. It makes more sense for the best photographer to take the photos, the best designer to layout the pages and the best salespeople to sell the ads. Plus, it gives people, especially students, a sense of identity to figure out what area they’re best at and what area they want to pursue. This way they can focus their energy and really excel in that area, instead of being too busy trying to be competent in everything.
As educators, we also must be mindful of what the students want out of the experience. This is different at every college. A journalism-school student at a large public school with an established daily college paper may need, or want, skills that a student editor at a weekly tabloid at a fine arts college may not. Likewise, students at that large university may expect different things from their college newspaper than students at the small art college. Advisers are always preaching audience appropriateness, and it should extend even to this area. If your student body wants in-depth, multimedia coverage of campus events, give it to them. But if your students aren’t interested, and would just like a newspaper to read while they’re waiting for class to start, you shouldn’t do unnecessary work that won’t be appreciated. Additionally, this work could detract effort from your existing product, and further harm your relationship to your readers. The readers come first, and in college student media, it’s easier to find out what they want. As advisers and educators, though, we must also uphold certain standards of quality. If students aren’t building their foundational skills as writers and reporters, we must be the ones to help them focus. Like Keen says, having more monkeys at more typewriters (and in this case, additional monkeys with typewriters, cameras, videocameras, audio recorders and web design software) doesn’t necessarily mean quality work will come out of it. Quality is the top priority here, and producing quality work should be every student media organization’s goal.
Even if you don’t agree with everything Keen has to say, hopefully you can agree with this. Keen says, early on, “Talent, as ever is a limited resource, the needle in today’s digital haystack.” Is our obligation as college media advisers to make those needles, or the haystack of mediocrity? Is our obligation to make signal or noise? Is our profession going to literally be in the hands of the typewriting monkeys? We have the power to stop this from happening. We have the power to train the new generation to be needles instead of hay, and, more importantly, to know the difference.
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