Questions to help student media (and pros) brainstorm transformation

As a teacher, gratifying to see students engaged in determining #FutureStuMedia Excellent presentation @stevebuttry! pic.twitter.com/qZwh8pZsYN

— Hans K. Meyer (@OhJProf) April 8, 2016

My keynote address last night at the Future of Student Media Summit included group discussions at tables around the room. A companion post has a blog version of my opening and closing remarks at the conference, hosted by the Post, Ohio University’s independent student digital and print newsroom.

In between, the students and faculty discussed the questions below. Each table would choose a question and discuss it for about eight minutes. Then we debriefed most of the groups.

Here were my instructions:

Choose a question to discuss in your group. The person whose last name is the closest to the end of the alphabet will take notes and speak for your group. For the purposes of this discussion, cost and technology are not obstacles. Discuss the ideal solution and presume you can get it done. Don’t feel the need to answer all the questions. If one of the questions launches a good discussion, roll with it and don’t cut it off to move on to the next question.

Here are the questions, interspersed with tweets as the groups were debriefing after their discussions:

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Continuing the discussion of why student media need to become digital-first

I am late in noting here that I had a guest post at Nieman Lab about why and how student media should move swiftly to become digital-first.

I elaborated on the points I made earlier this year about student media after doing some consulting for Texas Christian University and the University of Oregon and after teaching some digital-first workshops for TCU and the University of Texas at Arlington.

I also should note that University of Tampa journalism professor Dan Reimold wrote a detailed response to my Nieman Lab post.

It’s a thoughtful response that Jim Romenesko framed as a debate between Dan and me. After I commented on Dan’s blog, he responded that he “truly loved” my Nieman piece and that we are “pretty much in lock-step.”

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Student media need to pursue a digital-first approach

I have recommended digital-first approaches recently to faculty and student media leaders at my alma mater, Texas Christian University, and the University of Oregon.

I am delighted that Emerald Media in Oregon has announced that it will be digital-first next year, stopping Monday-Friday daily newspaper publication in favor of a timely digital news approach and two weekly print magazines. The University of Georgia’s Red and Black shifted to digital first with its move to weekly print production last fall (I played no role there).

TCU will continue publishing the Daily Skiff (I am a former Skiff editor, spring semesters of 1975 and ’76) four days a week, but will produce all content first and primarily for digital platforms. “We are moving from some of the news being produced and distributed first on a digital platform to all of the news being produced digitally with the intent of distributing it first in real-time via a digital platform,” Schieffer School of Journalism Director John Lumpkin told me in an email.

Even where the changes involve cutting the frequency of print production, we should not regard these moves as cutbacks but as moving forward. “This step is critical to expanding news coverage for our audience, in addition to preparing students for the changes in our profession,” John said.

The Schieffer School set the stage for this move by launching a news website, tcu360, that operated largely independently of the Skiff and TCU News Now, the student TV operation. “We made the philosophical decision to go ‘digital first’ in the spring of 2011 by creating tcu360,” John said.

This is the direction student media need to go. Journalism students must prepare to work and compete in the digital news marketplace and journalism schools and student media must do a better job of preparing them.

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