A quick roundup of pieces I don’t have time to break down in detail:
Journalism and education
In The newsonomics of News U, Ken Doctor suggests that news organizations can expand their community news and information role and play a formal role in education in the community:
As the tablet makes mincemeat of the historic differences among newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio, we see another bright line ready to dim: that seeming line between what a news organization and what a college each do.
I’m not going to try to summarize Ken’s piece, but I encourage you to read it. I will respond to one of Ken’s suggestions for the news business:
Add courses to the kinds of community engagement initiatives such companies as Digital First Media (and Steve Buttry, its leader in that area) are championing.
We actually do teach courses (not university courses, yet) at several of our newsrooms. Classes are a part of our acclaimed Newsroom Café in Torrington, Conn. We teach a “How to Get it Published” class regularly at the York Daily Record. We primarily offer courses for bloggers in the community (I have led workshops for bloggers at newsrooms in Norristown, Pa., Mt. Pleasant, Mich., New Haven, Conn., Pontiac, Mich., and perhaps others I’m not recalling immediately). In all of these places and others, staff members are teaching blogging classes at least and often other classes. The most popular class in Torrington is a genealogy class taught by someone in the community.
I won’t pretend that our brief workshops are equivalent to university classes, but we are already developing this community-education role.
Also a point of clarification: Ken uses “News U” as the name of this news organization/university he envisions. When I saw the headline, I thought at first that he was writing about Poynter’s News University, an online school for journalists (I developed one News U course: Introduction to Reporting: Beat Basics and Beyond). I’ll suggest to News U dean (that’s not his title, just what I call him) Howard Finberg that he clarify (or deepen) the confusion by inviting Ken to lead a News U webinar on the News U concept.
Journalism education
Eric Newton gave a keynote address a week ago to the Journalism Education in the Digital Age conference. Again, I won’t try to summarize, just encourage you to read it. Eric calls for deep, fundamental change in journalism education:
Universities can help lead the way through the era of “creative destruction.” But only if they are willing to destroy and recreate themselves.
Eric’s comments about the value of professional experience (and the refusal of too many journalism schools to recognize that value) are particularly noteworthy.
Doug Fisher of the University of South Carolina responded to Newton, with fairly broad agreement and some legitimate practical concerns. I agree with some points Doug was making but worry that practical concerns quickly become excuses. I’ve written and spoken frequently about how journalists and news organizations can’t let obstacles become excuses. Journalism schools need to attack those practical concerns Doug identifies and make the sweeping changes Eric advocates.
I provided advice on journalism curriculum more than two years ago. I would update that advice if offering it today, but I think it’s safe to say most journalism schools aren’t even doing what I advocated in 2009. They need to move beyond that and follow Eric’s advice today.
I have been asked recently for advice on student media. I hope to turn that advice into a blog post shortly.
Hashtags
Jessica Bernstein-Wax of the Marin Independent Journal, a Digital First Media colleague, blogged (with a mention and link to me) with two good ideas for newsrooms:
We should use hashtags more consistently and broadly. “It might help deliver information to the right people if we got more consistent with using the same hashtags for specific types of stories,” Jessica wrote. I know of newsrooms getting traction with this practice — the Denver Post uses #copreps in covering high school sports and the Oklahoman uses #okstorm for bad weather — but we need to make wider use of the practice. When you do, it catches on in the community and people involved in the stories contribute to the conversation and coverage.
Jessica also points out the value of adding Twitter feeds to breaking stories on news website.
She was responding to a blog post by Julia Glenister, a public relations professional who wrote critically of newsrooms’ weak use of social media. “Editorial departments must embrace social media as a vital tool of the trade,” Glenister wrote. Yep.
Paywalls and newspapers’ value
I just linked to some paywall discussions last week, but this one deserves attention, too: Dan Conover explains why Warren Buffett misunderstands the paywall issue. Dan also makes an interesting point about Buffett’s purchase of 63 Media General newspapers:
With 63 papers (along with their websites) selling for an average price of $2.25 million, its hard to believe that the valuation even comes close to covering the assessed value of the real estate involved. This is a company declaring “Take them! We don’t know what to do with them!”
I believe the same thing was true in Buffett’s purchase of the Omaha World-Herald last year. I haven’t done the reporting, but I was familiar enough with the Omaha property to do a quick top-of-the-head analysis, and I am convinced that the deal was largely a real-estate deal with newspapers thrown in. Buffett loves newspapers, but he’s a smart investor, and I think he has bought these newspapers for the value of their real estate.
I don’t have time to do the reporting on these two purchases (and other recent newspaper purchases, such as the Oklahoman and the San Diego Union-Tribune), but someone who writes about the news business should do that reporting (yes, looking at you, Ken Doctor, Rick Edmonds and Alan Mutter). I think the market has valued a newspaper at the value of its land and buildings.
Dan continued his discussion of the Media General sale in a Twitter exchange:
@stevebuttry What yesterday’s reporting didn’t mention was how far Media General had fallen. We got how much, but not why they dealt.
— Dan Conover (@xarker) May 18, 2012
@stevebuttry Friend told me about selling off her declining MG stock for $50/share in 98. With the BH deal, the price jumped 37% to $4.30
— Dan Conover (@xarker) May 18, 2012
@jcstearns @stevebuttry Right, & I’ll accept that in-cycle. But this looks like a lost army searching for someone to accept its surrender.
— Dan Conover (@xarker) May 18, 2012
I’m not familiar with the economics of the latest Buffett newspaper chain purchase. But he bought the Buffalo Evening News (now the Buffalo News) in 1977. Omaha World-Herald was his his hometown paper, and he bought it last year for what John Morton called “a pretty generous price.”
And before he bought the Buffalo paper,
==Buffett, in his fifth decade as CEO of Berkshire, won a Pulitzer Prize — the industry’s highest honor — for investigative reporting in 1973 as owner of the Omaha Sun. The paper was cited for an analysis of funding at Boy’s Town, a local charity, according to Alice Schroeder’s biography, “The Snowball, Warren Buffett and the Business of Life.” ==
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-30/buffett-s-berkshire-agrees-to-buy-hometown-newspaper-omaha-world-herald.html
He may have an appreciation of newspapers, even as he swings a good deal.
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