Journalism in the New News Ecology

Conversationalist 1: Laura Emerick

Conversationalist 2: Kelly McBride

Laura Emerick is the arts editor at the Chicago Sun Times. That means she’s the woman behind famed film critic Roger Ebert. She has been editing his work for 20 years.

She spends her work days doing more with less, and figuring out how she will catch up.

“Everybody wears many hats around here,” she said.

In addition to editing Ebert, she is the classical music reporter for the paper, covering the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. And, she’s the self-appointed Latin music and culture writer. That part of her job took on more significance when the paper’s Latin Affairs reporter went the way of down-sizing.

“Remember the Ed Sullivan Show with all the spinning plates?” she asks. Yeah, you get the idea.

Emerick gets the significance of the Internet. She’d like to start a blog. She’d love to get on Facebook. But she just doesn’t have the time.

She thinks about a buyout frequently. But she survived ovarian cancer in 2005 and the notion of going without medical insurance is a bit scary. For now, she figures she’ll stick around until Ebert quits.

She’s coming to the Newsecology Conference because she’s never been to Poynter and she’s hoping for some better ideas about balancing the demands of print and need to innovate on the web.

Conversationalists: Anne Anderson and Leslie Fishburn-Clark

Of necessity, we had a virtual conversation and are looking forward to hearing the sounds of each other’s voices for real!

What is the story of your work and how did it lead to saying “yes” to this gathering?

ANNE: At a time when many journalists are making mid-life career decisions — voluntarily or not — out of the field, I serendipitously have been led to make a mid-life career change into the field of news journalism. My alter ego was a full-charge bookkeeper/financial manager/executive secretary. Along the way, I wrote children’s stories, wrote/edited a weekly school newsletter for seven years, wrote/directed various skits and plays for our church, and wrote procedural manuals, PR stuff, and other equally memorable works. Beginning in 2003, I became a regular correspondent and columnist for the six weekly newspapers published by Tampa Bay Newspapers, Inc., and also did some freelance work for the St. Petersburg Times. In 2005, I returned to school and earned a B.A. in Creative Writing. I applied for and was awarded a Knight Foundation Fellowship in Community Journalism to earn a master’s degree in journalism through the University of Alabama. The classes were held at The Anniston Star, a two-hour drive from Tuscaloosa, and it was a wonderful, wonderful experience.

As to why I said “yes” to this gathering, I feel a great responsibility to share the things I’ve learned. My perspective is very different from most journalists’ perspectives. My financial management background makes me question the internal structure of most news organizations that, to me, is self-defeating and is tearing them apart. My work with children helps me see the ways most news organizations ignore this potential market (to put it in fiscally attractive terms) and cut their own credibility in the process. My years as a news consumer rather than a news conveyor helps me see both sides of many journalism issues.

LESLIE: My journalism career began in corporate media years ago at a combination AM/FM station in Florida.  A few years later I returned home to New Mexico, began working with an all news/talk AM radio station, then went to work in television.  The realization that I could not continue to work in commercial radio and TV came with two events.  First, a couple of  “hard” news stories were bumped from an evening newscast because one of the anchor’s wives had a baby and news management opted instead to devote the time to a visit to the hospital with the anchor to display the baby and talk with the poor woman who had very recently given birth.  A short time later I heard the phrase “infotainment.”  I knew then my career as commercial broadcast journalist was over.  I returned to school intending to refocus my career but what I learned was that I am a journalist at heart and I soon returned to broadcast news.  However, I made the change to public radio and fell in love with news reporting once again. I’m now in school once more and working part-part-time as a freelancer, reporting for news organizations such as Latino USA, National Native News, and Free Speech Radio News with an occasional story for NPR.
I attended JTM’s “New Pamphleteers” conference a couple of years ago and came away with a plethora of ideas for and information about venues, technology, and financial resources among other concerns for alternative news reporting.   But probably more importantly, I came away with a renewed commitment to “journalism that matters.” I’m anticipating more of the same from this conference.

Telling of an experience with the new realities of journalism in which the emerging news ecology actually made a difference in telling a story that mattered and what that experience taught me about the gifts of both new ways of working and the traditional roots of journalism.

LESLIE: I’m very fortunate to live in Albuquerque.  Activists and committed citizens here are working with a fledgling newspaper intended to fill the void left when the city’s evening paper folded, they have garnered two full power radio licenses and are in line for two more, and have started a media arts charter school.  Both the newspaper and radio stations are committed to providing alternative content.  I’m fortunate enough to play a bit part in the newspaper and radio licenses efforts.

ANNE: At first I had a hard time answering this question. Other than my experience in Anniston, I’ve never worked in a newsroom. Then I realized that in itself may be part of the new journalism. I know that some newspapers are exploring the idea of cutting costs by eliminating a physical newsroom. Instead they’re putting their news people out in the communities, either working from home or from storefront mini-offices. I’m way ahead of the game, in that respect.

As a result, my eyes and ears sometimes are open to stories and sources that are missed by others. One example comes from a class assignment to write about a beat we thought was overlooked. I wrote about children and included examples of several articles that could be written about local children I had met. One professor commented that these were stories of national interest. No. There are similar news-worthy articles about the children of every community – children just tend to fall outside the field of vision of most journalists.

Without being humble, what do you value most about yourself? What do you see yourself bringing to this meeting?

ANNE: As a news journalist, I value most my ability – learned as a debater – to see deeply into multiple sides of issues. I will bring this skill, my varied professional experiences, my background as an expert news consumer, and my recent in-depth studies of the business- and newsroom sides of journalism to this meeting.

LESLIE: My interviewing skills are often complimented.  I believe I’m a good listener.  I bring a commitment to the future of news to this meeting.

What is it about journalism without which it would cease to be journalism; what is its essential core? What are you ready to let go of?

ANNE: I am concerned that – to the average reader and to many of today’s quasi-journalists — the word “journalism” connotes writing a personal diary of life as seen through one person’s eyes and also providing a running commentary on that perspective. News journalism’s core is that it provides concise information drawn from as many perspectives (sources) as possible and trusts the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, to form his or her own commentary. I am also concerned that news journalism is in the midst of an identity crisis occasioned by its recent forays into fiction-writing territory. This mixing of the genres – evidenced by news journalists calling what they write “stories” and their resultant reducing of complex issues into an Everyman sort of mystery-play complete with plot, characters, and theme – has eroded our credibility. People want information, not fables, from the news journalists. I am more than ready to see news journalism let go of this obsession with story and return to its purpose of providing society with information.

The year is 2014 and the new news ecology is a vibrant media landscape. What is journalism bringing to communities and democracy that matters most? What steps did we take back in 2009 to begin to bring this about?

ANNE: News journalism in 2014 is bringing a spirit of cohesiveness rather than one of divisiveness to communities that results in citizens making decisions about their communities based on information about the long-term effects of those decisions rather than on short-term emotion. We took at least three steps in 2009:

• We stopped waiting for investors and philanthropists to bail us out and formed cooperatives to purchase failing news organizations ourselves.
• We stopped relying on antiquated and artificial internal divisions that pitted too many “us’s” against too many “them’s” and restructured news organizations innards to work together instead of at odds with each other.
• We took a good look at the entire community we purported to serve and purposed to proportionally and objectively become an organic information conduit connecting all the various parts of that community with each other.

Conversationalist 1:  Linda Jue

Conversationalist 2:  Tracy Ward Durkin

Linda is the Director/Executive Editor of the G.W. Williams Center for Indy Journalism which sponsors national reporting intitiatives  designed to re-engage journalists, particularly journalists of color, women, and youth, in preserving journalism’s mission as the Fourth Estate in the changing media environment.  Linda has leveraged her extensive background in media, from being an investigative reporter and former editor at San Francisco Focus magazine to her work as a founding staff member and associate director of the Independent Press Association, where she developed models to enable independent,mission-driven publications to compete in the marketplace, to focus on creating model reporting projects for doing great journalism.  While others have focused on how to monetize new media, Linda concerns herself with how we can ensure that we achieve excellence in journalism, which not only means ensuring reporting the stories that are highly localized and well investigated, are written by and/or about people of diverse backgrounds, and provide a living wage for the reporters.  She is interested in creating new models, but has also found models that are already working, and is interested in what role those models could play in the next evolution of media.  Linda is passionate about her mission, “I’m one of the many journos who were inspired by Watergate, who believed we could change the world through journalism.  The time is ripe now for journos to regain that sense of mission.  I see this periosd as an opportunity to create new, out-of-the box forms of journalism taht will reinvogorate a profession that essentially has been dying on the vine over the past 25+ years.”  Linda recognizes the importance of not having media become so segmented that publications “preach to the choir”–an ongoing risk, particularly as media moves online. In addition, Linda is working on a new project that will be concerned with media itself, looking at how it is covered and raising consciousness amongst the public on what the changes in media, whether it be skyrocketing paper costs or the closure of newspapers, mean to them.

Reflections:

Although Linda and I deviated from the proposed set of questions right away, our conversation was fascinating.  I believe that in many ways, Linda and I share a similar passion for journalism, but our paths and approaches a vastly different.  Linda, being a journalist herself, is highly sensitized to the challenges of producing great journalism, whether it be for commercial or resource reasons.  At the same time, Linda recognizes the power of media and is committed to leveraging that power to protect our democracy.  As a non-journalist, publisher, who is also committed to the Fourth Estate, it was great to meet someone who is concerning themselves with finding new models that can ensure excellence in media.  Linda seems like a person who I could collaborate with on new innovations and I find that very exciting.

Submitted by PeggyHolman on Thu, 02/26/2009 – 11:11am

Session Reporter: Peggy Holman

Conversationalist 1: Tom Honig

Conversationalist 2: Peggy Holman

Tom Honig, former editor of the Santa Cruz Sentinel and I spoke on Tuesday, February 24th.  After more than 35 years as a journalist, Tom has been doing public relations for the past year.  I was struck by the value of his time away from the profession, providing perspective that will serve us all well at the conference. He told me that he misses being part of the fourth estate:

I went to the Newseum about 4-5 months ago.  It was the first time I had this crisis of confidence — I’m not one of them anymore.  It is difficult for my identity, to not say I’m part of the 4th estate.  Attending this conference is my way of fighting back.  It doesn’t do to sit around and lament what is happening.

He further reflected on what he is learning about perceptions of journalists:

The time away has been interesting, to read the paper the way others do.  I’ve been training people on public relations, how to present something in a way journalists will understand it.  People coming through the training fear journalists will get the story wrong. The reporters just miss the story. They don’t fear accurate journalism.

We also talked about what he values about the emerging news ecology…

As we moved to online at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, we weren’t innovators, we were close followers of trends.  In 2004-05, we embraced multimedia.  I bought a digital recorder and a video camera, paying for it myself to play around with it.  The goal, was for example, an early thing we did, a series on race in Santa Cruz.  We had a Q&A in the paper and a live podcast with the police chief.  We were trying to look at the best way through audio and video.  That succeeded to present day.  For the first time, with our tools, we could do coverage we couldn’t imagine 10-20 years ago.  We can compete with the metros.  When you have the tools, it can make you competitive.  What is frustrating now, you’re cut so much, not getting training or staff size to make use of the tools.

How journalism is changing…

I think the difficulty of people trying to do things themselves, journalism now is more a team sport now.  You need people with different gifts, front end work, storyboarding to figure out the best way to tell a story.  I miss the give and take.  I haven’t had the wearwithal to do a startup.  Maybe I’ll get some ideas, at the conference to do that.

And what he values about traditional journalism…

How do you really do the reporting to get an accurate story?  Not instantly posting something, the values of investigating, learning and explaining and thinking about the import of a story.  Crucial values, I see left out of the discussion as things change.

As you go through convulsive change, you have to look at what do you truly need to save?
When I worked with brilliant young people, that know more than I’ll ever know about gizmos and online tools, and page makeup and design, they do not have enough respect for what’s involved in good, basic, accurate, mainstream objective journalism.  I think sometimes, one thing I’ve thought about, all of us who are experienced know the situation of coverage of people you don’t agree with and giving them a fair hearing.  And being skeptical of those with whom you do agree.  Standards of the business.

The second part, how do you present complex, information in a way that most people can understand it?  Explaining science, economics, travel, politics; how do you manage to present the world as its proceeding in a way that’s understandable and clear?

After a great conversation, I look forward to meeting Tom in person.

Submitted by DavidArdia on Thu, 02/26/2009 – 10:11amin

Conversationalists: David Ardia and Neil Budde

What is the story of your work and how did it lead to saying “yes” to this gathering?

Neil Budde: Neil joined DailyMe after more than 30 years working for newspapers and online publishers. He most recently was vice president and editor in chief of Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Sports.  At Daily Me, he is working to create a “comprehensive news experience for the individual.”  This involves more than merely helping people discover relevant and interesting news; it’s an effort to help people find information they didn’t know they were looking for, replicating the serendipity that used to come from browsing.  Neil is interested in this gathering because he has been deeply involved in the economics of news.  He is interested in the challenges facing journalism and is generally optimistic about where things are headed.

David Ardia: David directs the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.  He’s a media and intellectual property lawyer who formerly served as in-house counsel at The Washington Post.  He is primarily focused on providing legal training, assistance, and support for online publishers, and hopes that his work serves as a catalyst for creative thinking about the intersection of law and journalism on the Internet.  David is interested in this gathering because he knows that many online publishers face legal threats and other challenges.  He is eager to help publishers understand the law and to lower the legal barriers for journalists and journalism organizations that seek to embrace new media.

What is it about journalism without which it would cease to be journalism; what is its essential core?

Neil: Finding truth and providing information to people that is actionable.

David: Providing information to people that allows them to make informed decisions about their lives and government.

The year is 2014 and the new news ecology is a vibrant media landscape. What is journalism bringing to communities and democracy that matters most? What steps did we take back in 2009 to begin to bring this about?

Neil: More precise targeting of content and advertising, including targeting based on geography, topic, and expertise.  Journalists can use their expertise to provide more than just daily stories.  That expertise can be applied to aggregation and organization of information that is largely lacking in current forms of journalism.

David: News and information will break free from existing structures and forms.  New technologies will allow journalists to focus on providing perspective, context, and wisdom.  Government can help subsidize this by providing information in a structured and open format.  By making public availability the default, state and federal governments can significantly reduce the cost of covering government activities.

Submitted by kpowers@cnc.com on Fri, 02/20/2009 – 9:32amin

Conversationalists: Jennifer Hemmingsen/Kat Powers

KAT POWERS’ RESPONSES:

What is the story of your work and how did it lead to saying “yes” to this gathering?

Kat is managing editor for two of Boston-area weekly newspapers that became Web first in December 2006. It was a big leap – her papers are two of the oldest continually publishing weeklies in the US – and not all staffers were able to manage the transition. “Now I have a small, fast moving crew,”  she said. That means a staffer-and-a-half at each paper, a shared obits writer and office manager:  “We’re all out there – we all have cameras, we all shoot video.” She also has a cadre of readers who generate content – photos, stories — a natural transition, since the papers had a history of user-generated community notes. Kat’s running the smartest and fastest organization in her newspaper group, and she’s exhausted her staff’s ideas. She’s ready to learn from somebody else.

We’re well beyond the debate that journalism is changing. Tell me about an experience you.ve had with these new realities — roles, tools, relationships, economics — in which the emerging news ecology actually made a difference in telling a story that mattered. What did that experience teach you about the gifts of both new ways of working and the traditional roots of journalism?

When a school caught fire recently, Kat had a freelance photo and initial police comments posted to the Web site before she even left to go to the scene. It was shift change at the local TV station, so she owned the story for five hours.

During that time, students and teachers at the school used the story comment section to talk with each other about their fears and concerns. When school leaders finally met hours after the fire had started, they realized they had lost control of the story – they couldn’t control the news any more. Top down wasn’t going to work.

Now, the paper’s site hosts the mayor’s blog – where he communicates directly to citizens (one recent entry: apologies and explanations about why the Christmas trees hadn’t yet been picked up). Kat’s state rep texts her from the statehouse floor. The skills are the same: gathering information — verifying it and getting it out to readers – but the vehicle is different. Kat calls it working without a net.  “Every once in a while somebody tells me I need a copyeditor,” she said,. But other readers quickly leap to her defense. She’s still serving her longtime subscribers (“We’ve been around since 1870,” she said. “I have readers who used to deliver the paper before the big war.”), by offering in print traditional fare like crime and politics, along with a digest of the best of the week’s Web news. But she’s also attracted a younger online audience that can be fiercely loyal.

Without being humble, what do you value most about yourself? What do you see yourself bringing to this meeting?

“I work really, really hard and – I work with really, really young people all the time so I might be at the vanguard of some of the things like Twitter that some of my colleagues might not know about.”

What is it about journalism without which it would cease to be journalism; what is its essential core? What are you ready to let go of?

Journalism is about the ability to ask questions beyond your own point of view. Journalists aren’t necessarily better at gathering information, but they are trained to get all sides and a greater perspective.

The year is 2014 and the new news ecology is a vibrant media landscape. What is journalism bringing to communities and democracy that matters most? What steps did we take back in 2009 to begin to bring this about?

“In 5 years I think we’ll be able to bring more tools to community members – so newspaper web sites will have easy portals where you can load your own video of a car crash or a parade.” To get there, we have to train our community journalists about how we do what we do.

JENN HEMMINGSEN’S RESPONSES:

What is the story of your work and how did it lead to saying “yes” to this gathering?

My Facebook friends are automatically notified when I update my blog. My followers on Twitter have contributed to a half-dozen columns so far in addition to providing feedback about what I’ve written. I’ve taken some baby steps toward full-time interactive content, but I’ve got a million miles to go. Where exactly? I’m not sure.

What I do know is that the opinion department has historically been the most interactive part of the news business and we should lead the way in expanding that to include new technologies, new audiences and new ideas. People are used to using us to talk back to the newspaper or directly to their neighbors. We should capitalize on this energy and tradition, while recognizing and meeting the unique technical and ethical challenges of the new news ecology.

The Gazette has “blown up the newsroom” and is going information first – as subject matter experts, reporters will be more aggressive than ever in soliciting community content and raw information in addition to their traditional tasks. As a columnist, I’ll also need to develop new strategies to capture an ever greater share of this fragmented online audience.

We’re well beyond the debate that journalism is changing. Tell me about an experience you.ve had with these new realities — roles, tools, relationships, economics — in which the emerging news ecology actually made a difference in telling a story that mattered. What did that experience teach you about the gifts of both new ways of working and the traditional roots of journalism?

The news broke over the weekend: the state fire marshal had shut down a century-old school building turned bunkhouse where 21 mentally disabled men were living in unsafe conditions. Soon after, we learned the men’s caretakers and employers were accused of taking all their wages from jobs at a nearby turkey processing plant. As more information became available, it seemed there were 10 questions remaining for every one question answered. So I reported in public: posting to my blog the questions I had and asking for readers to tell me what they wanted to know. As I interviewed, I posted snippets of source responses to the blog. As I read the clips, I posted stories to the blog. When my Wednesday column appeared I put that up, too. I felt good about keeping people posted, and getting their feedback during the process. Since it was all work I was doing anyway, it wasn’t a huge burden to post.

Without being humble, what do you value most about yourself? What do you see yourself bringing to this meeting?

Openness to new ideas but a healthy skepticism about how we’ll be able to do good journalism in this new atmosphere.

What is it about journalism without which it would cease to be journalism; what is its essential core? What are you ready to let go of?

Providing timely and accurate information that helps people make decisions and make sense of their communities; providing public oversight of public business (watchdog). Everything else is negotiable to me.

The year is 2014 and the new news ecology is a vibrant media landscape. What is journalism bringing to communities and democracy that matters most? What steps did we take back in 2009 to begin to bring this about?

I hope that we’ll be able to help make sense of the cacophony, that we’ll be sense makers helping people sift through unlimited content. A digital marketplace of ideas where truth really does float to the top. I think we’re getting there in terms of quantity and opening the gates for more information. I wonder about the sense part.

JENN’S REFLECTION:

The interview process got me excited about meeting everyone. I was intrigued by Kat’s stories about how plugged in her readers are and hope to learn some tips. I was surprised by how much of what we do that I’d consider negotiable if it serves the greater purpose.

Kat’s reflection:

My new buzzword came from Jenn. She described the process of putting bits online that folks comment upon (while writing the larger story) as “writing in public.” That knocked me out.

I think Jenn is able to put into words this whole — we’re building the future, holy cow that’s scary — aspect of our jobs. I think it will be great to hear from others how they deal with this.