Getting Back in the Groove

Today I became an official reporter for BYU's The Daily Universe. Sweet, right?

I'm working out of the metro desk and probably covering the national/White House beat. Again, sweet.

I took a trip to DC at the beginning of June. LOVE DC!

Couple of comments I've been meaning to make.

Discovered the magazine Capitol Hill. I really enjoyed it. There was a great article about journalists covering the White House that I found especially fun to read.

On my way back home I had a layover in Chicago. With all the hub bub of The Tribune trying to figure out it's identity, I picked up a copy to peruse. The new format was fine, definitely more manageable to read when sitting next to someone in close quarters. But, I was baffled by the "play" and "marketplaces" sections that still had the traditional formatting.

That's all.

how to use Twitter for reporting

Some slightly more advanced tips on how to use twitter to your journalistic advantage.




The site is kinda cool too, http://beatblogging.org.

Today I was at the local library for a brief moment. I decided to look up their journalism/new media books. (Now imagine that stupid buzzing noise that comes on when people get stuff wrong).

Nothing! Well there was stuff, but most of it was from the 90's and seemingly irrelevant.

I took two thoughts (and no books) away from the library today.

The first being that maybe the selection of journalism materials in our community library is a reflection of the state of journalism in my home town.

Second, why the hail would I look for to learn about new media in old media forms? Hello! I, we, should be going to the source! The best way to learn is usually first hand, thus the reasoning behind internships.

Anyway, just a friendly reminder to me, and all aspiring new journalists.

NEW not OLD.

A Taste

Here's a taste of what's happening in my neck of the woods. And this was back in March. Unemployment in Harney County has just reached something like 22% and with the closure of our sawmills here in Union County, our unemployment rate is bound to hit 18 or 19% soon.

Do Tell, Mr. Nobel Prize Winner

I'm Concerned

So I've been rereading Jeffrey Scheuer's "The Big Picture," (okay, truth be told I only read the first 60 pages fall semester when it was assigned reading, but I've held onto it knowing that when I had more leisure time I would read it). I've been reminded of some interesting points.

Scheuer talks about chief threats to indpendent journalism - profit and power. But then says the more serious threats are political and economic (Scheuer, 2008, p. 48).

If we rewind a bit Scheuer also discusses the fact that information is an economic good. This essentially means that information is subject to a market economy. Journalism is the transfer of information into context and understanding for the general public, thus journalsim is subject to a market economy (thus "the journalism industry").

But one of Scheuer's main ideas in his book is that democracy depends on quality journalism, and the quality of journalism that is produced within a state is indictative of the quality of democracy to be found in that state (Scheuer, 2008, p. 11).

If much of this rings as true to you as it did to me, then a state of grave conern must be encroaching upon your usually complacent state - maybe in the form heartburn, indigestestion, upset stomach or diarrhea (pink does more than you think) - because of what we see happening to journalism in its current forms. We see layoffs, we see cuts in content, we see all online news "papers," all in the name of money and profit. We see newsroom headhaunchos trying to use citizen journalists. Blogs are booming as replacement news sources and shows on comedy central become people's goto for hardhitting news.

One could argue that journalism quality is significantly decreasing. Does that mean so is the state of our democracy? How can we keep the quality while morphing into modern journalism? How do we swallow the bad taste of economically hard times and still provide citizens with "enough good information to make informed judgemdnts," (Scheuer, 2008, p. 25)?

Scheuer points out that not only do citizens need to be able to access good information, they need to understand the sources from which they are obtaining their info. How does that source reflect and explain and why? Do consumers of today's information understand from where they are getting their info? Does Joe Six-Pack's blog provide the same information as The Wall Street Journal? Does the average soccer mom understand the fundamental difference between the two?

All of this was just to say, I'm concerned.

"a more immediately digestible reading experience"

A recent blog was posted by TIME's Michael Scherer that seems to sum up how the news is changing. While Scherer's focus is on political news, I think it's core ideas are valuable to all journalists, especially those of us still in the depths of our studies. I highly suggest reading the full article, but here's just a blurb:

"The Internet has changed the incentives for news producers. Once upon a time, the incentive of a print reporter at a major news organization was to create a comprehensive, incisive account of an event like Cheney's provocative interview on CNN. (Open the New York Times or the Washington Post tomorrow, and you will still be able to read versions of this story.) That account would then be packaged into a container (a newspaper, a magazine, a 30-minute network news broadcast) and sold to the consumer. In the Internet-age, by contrast, what matters is not the container, but the news nugget, the blurb, the linkable atom of information. That nugget is not packaged (since the newspapers, magazine, broadcast television structure do not really apply online), but rather sent out into the ether, seeking out links, search engine ranking and as many hits as possible. A click is a click, after all, whether it's to a paragraph-length blog post or a 2,000 word magazine piece. News, in other words, is increasingly no longer consumed in the context of a full article, or even a full accounting of an event, but rather as Twitter-sized feeds, of the sort provided by the Huffington Post, The Page, and The Drudge Report. Each quote gets its own headline. Context and analysis are minimized for space. The reader, choosing her own adventure as she clicks, creates her own narrative of the world, one that is largely dependent on the aggregators she employs."