FCCPA convention: Industry Trends

Note: This seminar was given at the Florida Community College Press Association 2007 Convention.  It is reprinted here with links to the original articles.

“We stand at a crossroads of change,” says John W. Allman, two-time Pulitzer prize nominee and investigative reporter at the Tampa Tribune -

A change in how the news is reported – The traditional nightly newscast and morning newspaper are no longer the first choice of viewers and readers. The Internet has opened the door to 24-hour nonstop coverage. More people read news websites than buy newspapers. Many prefer to catch a ticker tape scroll of headlines instead of sitting through an entire newscast. And bloggers now compete with legitimate media outlets, reporting from their couch about events they never witnessed, gathering facts from sources that often cannot be confirmed.

And a fundamental change in what constitutes news itself.

What makes all this possible?  Web 2.0.

There’s no doubt that one of the biggest trends in the news industry is the online revolution.  Consider this Profile of a Newspaper Web site User:

80% of people that go online use online newspapers (NAA Power Users 2006; MORI Research) A significant amount of data is showing that newspaper site users are highly engaged and a quality audience – they spend more time online, are better educated and have higher incomes than online audiences in general. They are also more likely to make purchases online and to use the Web to decide what to buy.

What online users are looking at -

Q.1 Which of these tasks or capabilities have you used on the Internet? Base: 710 Newspaper Site Visitors;
Source: Newspaper National Network LP 2007, NNN Integrated Footprint Study, Conducted by Scarborough Research

Blogs

Newspaper Web sites are creating a community hub through blogging.  According to the Newspaper National Network LP Nielson NetRatings, the number of unique visitors to newspaper blog pages is up 325% and the number of newspaper blog pages is up 210% in 2006 from 2005 for the top 10 online newspapers.

Look at St. Louis Today as a good example.  There are more than 45 blogs listed, in topics ranging from national and prep sports teams to fashion to business.  Most are written by the St. Louis Post Post-Dispatch staff, while others are written by community members.

Audio and Video

Nearly 60% of news site viewers listen to audio and video.  The New York Times has one of the most extensive lists of video stories.  Journalists are just as likely to be in front of the camera as behind the camera.

Short news casts are also becoming popular.  The Roanoke Times produces a daily vodcast that is very entertaining.

Online Packages

The Internet also allows for more indepth, interactive story packages, like the Vanishing Wetlands series from the St. Petersburg Times.

Reinventing the newsroom

To cope with the changing face of journalism, newspapers have also had to reinvent their newsrooms.  News is pushed online as soon as bits of information come in, and added to as more information becomes available.  Two news organizations produced video to show how the new operation works – The Press Gazette in the United Kingdom and the Post-Crescent, a Gannett paper in Wisconsin.

Smaller Newspapers see value in online

Don’t overlook smaller newspapers.  In the article “Big Profits in Small Packages” Washington Post staff writer, Frank Ahrens says:

If there’s any good news about the businesses of newspapering these days, it can be found at the industry’s littlest papers, which are doing well even as their bigger brothers founder.

Why? Small papers face less competition from other media outlets, are insulated from ad slumps that have hammered big papers, employ smaller staffs of lower-salaried journalists and have a zealous devotion to local news, both in print and online, industry experts agree. Also, there is less competition on the Web for local news.

The small-newspaper division of Freedom Communications generated a 30 percent profit in 2006, up 5 percent from 2005. By comparison, a very successful large newspaper typically returns about 20 percent annually.

The Shelby Star, a newspaper with a circulation of 15,000, has blogs, podcasts and video in addition to print stories.  Online viewership has increased more than 80 percent in the last year, according to its publisher.

Why you need to learn new media skills

What are editors looking for in students?  Not clips, according to Paul Conley, media consultant -

Most importantly, a clip ties a student to the part of the industry that is least likely to hire him — print. When a student hands a clip to a publishing executive today he’s likely handing it to someone who has already laid off a slew of print-only reporters. It’s an exercise in absurdity for students to market themselves as talented print journalists to executives who have laid off talented print journalists by the thousands.

Instead, this is what he looks for -

1. Youth itself: …The simple truth is that youth itself has a value in today’s publishing world. We need people who live online and understand what it means…I want to hire people who send text messages on a PDA, have Facebook accounts and MySpace pages and write blogs about local bands. I don’t need experts in these things. I just need people I can talk to when I want to talk about new products and ideas.

2. Self-taught: When I look at the skill set on a student’s resume I’m most interested in things that are not part of the curriculum. I know how quickly things have changed in our industry. And I know how quickly they will continue to change. And time and time again I’ve seen journalists complain about things that they don’t know how to do because no one has taught them. Then I’ve waived good-bye as they were laid off.
So I want new hires who have enough sense to teach themselves what they need to know. Sure, there are skills and software that I prefer to others. But when I’m meeting students I’m thrilled by someone who taught himself Dreamweaver, whereas I’m not so impressed by someone who took a course in PhotoShop.

3. Entrepreneurial: Back when I was leaving school, with my degree in hand and a ton of clips from a great journalism program, I had the good luck to interview with someone who quizzed me incessantly about my life. And he was pleased and surprised to find that a) I had helped publish a fanzine about music in New York, and b) had been paid $15 a week while a student to type up sport scores from my school and walk them over to a local paper.
Neither of those things were on my resume. But they were the reason he hired me.
Now I’m the old guy. And I look for those same indications of ambition and entrepreneurial sense in students.
That’s why I tell students that the only clips I want to see are the ones they were paid for. Nothing tells me that a writer has value like that fact that someone “valued” his writing.

The Future

Remapping the Universe is an interesting look at how we might gather and use information in the future.

New look for site

I changed the look of the site.  Was really getting tired of the plain blue heading.  I’ll change the photo when I find something suitable.

Status report on new Corsair structure

We’re a month into the new Corsair organizational structure and it is working beyond my wildest dreams.  All the teams have taken ownership of their sections and I’m seeing some great results.

Continuous news has three writers and an editor and is posting something nearly every day.  One post, on a Dylan and Costello concert in Georgia, received 900 page views the day it was posted.  I think that might have had something to do with the College Publisher Network, but that’s still way more than what we normally average. 

We did have to hire a managing editor for Continuous News.  They are so busy writing that they haven’t had time to keep the calendar and messages up to date.  The managing editor manages workflow, not staff.  When a story idea comes in, she funnels it to the correct team or posts a quick story online.

For Enterprise Projects, we chose topics at the beginning of the semester, mainly to help the print edition meet deadlines.  Students from the journalism classes are free to choose story ideas within those topics or to cover something for Student Life.  We have already produced a package on a Pensacola Superfund site, and the current issue covers environmental issues on campus and recycling.  The great thing about planning these packages is that the students have time to think about art and additional information to include with the stories.

BTW, we are making this work without an editor-in-chief.  The five team leaders have formed an interim editorial board and they like it so much, they would like to change the structure permanently.

If there’s an area where I would suggest improvement, it would be to bring more campus-related news to Continuous News.

Corsair staff redesign

We have come to realize at The Corsair that if we want to do more online we have to think more “online.”  So over the summer, I helped the staff redesign job descriptions.  Using the Gannett model, as well as some others, we tweaked the models to fit what we could do as a small staff.

Here’s our structure:

Continuous News team

This team is responsible for providing a daily stream of content to eCorsair.com.  Team members will report in shifts to The Corsair office one afternoon a week and will complete stories, post briefs and calendar items during that shift.  The team’s focus is primarily online, but also provides information for upcoming events for print edition.

The team:

• Covers breaking news, campus events to provide a daily stream of information to site
• Adds briefs, items to calendar of events
• Covers home sporting events and posts results
• Recruits and mentors mojos for Warrington and Milton campuses to report on events, programs

Enterprise Projects team

This team works on projects and stories that will include in-depth research, involving multiple sources.  The stories could evolve into packages about a particular issue and include audio, video and photo galleries.  The stories and packages could be produced for print, online or a combination.  Much of the content produced by this team will probably come from the reporting and college publications classes. The team:

• Provides more in-depth reports than the continuous news team.  May take a breaking story and provide more context and meaning
• Examines college and local issues, acts as watchdog and provides in-depth information vital to public
• Encourages community participation through requests for information (crowdsourcing), topic ideas
• Provides searchable databases and other graphics for readers to better understand information

Community Conversation team

This team is responsible for providing opportunities designed to give a voice to the campus community.   The team also finds ways to promote market eCorsair.com as the pulse of  PJC.  The team provides content for both print and online.

The team:

• Provides content and manages commentary including editorials, blogs and columns
• Encourages community participation online through comments
• Empowers readers to create their own forums for discussion

Student Life team

This team covers entertainment, lifestyle and trend issues of interest to readers.  The bulk of the stories will be published in print and repurposed for online.

• Provides stories about health and fitness, money, entertainment and other topics of interest to readers.  Could also contain crosswords, comics and other entertainment extras.

• Provides profiles on PJC students and other people of interest to readers.
• Provides profiles of PJC programs or aspects of programs.

Multimedia team

This team produces multimedia content for eCorsair.com.  In addition, the team will produce graphics and design for The Corsair.

• Produces video, audio, graphics, photo galleries, in support of other teams, as well as content which originates with the multimedia team, such as podcasts, newscasts and original online-only multimedia stories.

  <Note:  All teams will be familiar with and use various tools in storytelling, including audio, video and photography.  All teams will be responsible for posting content online and providing finished, edited content for print as needed.

So far, the staff has really embraced this new concept, with plenty of healthy brainstorming for even more new ideas.  We are also starting the fall semester with the largest staff we have had yet – seven.  When we are fully staffed, we should have about 15 paid employees.  The positions left to be filled are about 3-5 hours a week (editors earn 10 hours a week pay).

 

I’ll keep you updated as the semester progresses.  As I told the staff, we are in uncharted territory and there are bound to be bumps along the way!

 

Decisions in the field

This is one of the most thought-provoking articles I’ve read recently, and a divergent viewpoint from a Pulitzer prizewinning photojournalist in a world where photoj’s aren’t quite ready to embrace video:

 The Shift. by Kim Komenich.

Found via Newspaper Video Yahoo group.

Komenich thinks the time is near that reporters and photojournalists will be working for a web company that produces a newspaper a few times a week.  His reasoning, in part, is the environmental impact in producing the newspaper:

the concept of paying a guy to drive a logging truck into the woods (at $3 a gallon) to cut down a tree and drive the log to a paper mill (at $3 a gallon), then pay some other guy to drive a train or truck full of newsprint out of state to a newspaper’s printing plant (at $3 a gallon), then to pay some other guys to drive big trucks full of printed newspapers (at $3 a gallon) to a distribution point where some other guys (some driving cars at $3 a gallon and some on foot or bicycle) deliver the newspaper to the reader — wouldn’t get you much venture capital for your 2007 startup.  

But the key concept he promotes is this:

Today’s journalist is (or soon will be) a “field producer” who is trusted as the person on location who will decide how the story will best be told (be it in stills and words, or stills only, or words only, or audio and stills, or audio only, or video — the possibilities are endless). This journalist then sets about to tell the story with the curiosity, empathy and originality by practicing his or her core skill as a photographer, reporter or videographer.

From my personal experience, Komenich makes sense.  I can’t tell you how many times I covered a story and thought, “I wish people could hear the passion in this person’s voice” or see his facial expressions as he chokes back a tear or struggles to find the words.  I wish I had a recorder or video camera as part of my toolkit.

The method of storytelling might change, but it’s still the reporter and photojournalist at the core, relating the story.  It wouldn’t be journalism any other way.