New York Edition of Wall Street Journal Comes at Same Time as Times Staff Cuts

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23744134@N08/3424787909/

In class last Friday, Professor Selvin made an interesting point concerning the proposed staff cuts we’ve all been hearing about set to take place at the New York Times this week.

I just thought it was worth reiterating—maybe we can get a bit of a discussion going on this. As always, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts.

So, it seems that Times Executive Editor Bill Keller has fallen short of his goal of clipping 100 newsroom jobs off the payroll this year. According to the New York Post, it seems as though only 50 unionized newsroom employees agreed to take buyouts so far. Tomorrow, Times executives will be forced to make the choice for the remaining lot who have not yet made a decision by the Monday deadline.

In addition, according to the New York Observer, the Times staff plans on cutting an estimated 70 of its blogs from the homepage.

Cue Rupert Murdoch, the quintessential media boogeyman who always seems to be lurking behind every corner of the news industry. This April, the News Corp. giant plans to launch a New York City edition of his Wall Street Journal headed by John Seeley, a former editor of the New York Sun. The $15 million price tag will go towards the creation of a sparkling new newsroom and marketing staff.

With the new staff covering a range of topics from local politics to culture and sports, things could soon get heated between the Wall Street Journal and the Times.

On that note, who knows what other news organizations will attempt similar ventures in the future? I mean, the Wall Street Journal has a stake in the San Francisco Bay area and the New York Times launched its Chicago edition just last month.

I also remember reading not too long ago about a Washington-based news site that planned to compete with the Washington Post on a local level, although the name escapes me (most likely because I remember reading that no one had yet named it). How long will it be before the Washington Post dips its feet in the New York scene, as well? How long will it be until Patch.com takes over the world?

With the Times Metro section reduced to a greatly distilled version of its former self and New York Newsday long dead, one has to wonder what this will mean for the future of journalism in New York City?

Will those employees squeezed out of the Times as early as tomorrow morning find a new home with Seeley and Murdoch and compete directly with their former colleagues and editing staff?

Hmm.

Things could soon get very interesting on the streets of New York.

Pulitzer Prize Clause Beneficial to Online Writers

Photo: http://washpost.com/gen_info/history/prizes.shtml

I found this one floating around in the Fishbowl the other day and figured I’d weigh in.

So, it seems that sometime in this past year, the Pulitzer Prize Committee acknowledged that perhaps not all material pushed out of a blog server is absolute garbage—excellent news for those of us in the hollows of cyberspace currently uninsured by a paper-and-ink justification of trustworthiness.

A recent modification to the Pulitzer rules states that now “entries for journalism awards must be based on material coming from a text-based United States newspaper or news site that publishes at least weekly during the calendar year,” thereby expanding eligibility to online contributors.

Based on the number of negative comments below the article, however, it seems as though some people very clearly associate the rise of the blogosphere with the inevitable violent death of ‘good’ journalism. I disagree.

New Scarborough Study: 74 Percent of Adults Read a Paper Sometime Last Week

Photo: http://www.corbisimages.com

Cheer up, fellow journalists! Newspaper companies may actually be holding onto their audiences with the romantic lure of their bulky ink-stained bundles of joy after all.

A recent Scarborough Research study found that an average of 74 percent of adults in the United States read a newspaper at some point in the past week, while 10 percent more college grads and/or those racking up six figure incomes did the same.

Oh, boy. Put down that Kleenex.

That odd sun-splotched patch of optimism we’ve so desperately needed in the bleak desert of the chronic bad news that is the media industry has finally arrived!

I think.

Maybe?

Uhh..

Folio’s Top 15 Magazine Launches of 2009–New Titles are About as ‘Nichey’ as it Gets

Screenshot: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food-network-magazine/package/index.html

It’s that time of year again!

No, no.

Not Thanksgiving…although it is safe to say that one thing I’m certainly not thankful for this year is the dismal journalism course list for spring 2010, to which I was actually referring in my (mildly sarcastic) opening sentence.

Yes, it’s officially enrollment time here at Stony Brook—a two-week period of anxiety, compromise or momentary delight, depending, I guess, on whether you happened to get lucky with your enrollment appointment.

For journalism students, it’s also become sort of a viewing window to the struggle between the journalism department and the budget office, and from what I understand, the journalism department is about to be the budget’s latest K-O.

The latest casualties seem to be the required JRN 330’s, the three-credit ‘nichey’ sort of classes that zero in on one element of reporting. Last semester, I vividly recall seeing Business Reporting, Science and Health Reporting, Sports Reporting and Narrative Journalism (formerly Feature Writing) in the course catalog, mainly because I’m still partly scarred by the fact that I got shut out of Narrative for the second semester in a row.

This year, my choices were limited to either Narrative or Sports Reporting, a less than exhilarating prospect for someone who can only name two players on the New York Yankees, and this, I say, is incredibly disappointing.

After being bombarded with myriad PowerPoint presentations on emerging niche sites, (GlobalPost, Bitmob, ProPublica and the like) I’m pretty much of the notion that subscription-based niche sites are going to be the thing wherein we’ll catch the conscience of the publisher.

I’m a huge advocate of the idea of concentrating expertise and saturating the coverage in one particular area. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the fact that ‘concentrated’ courses are suffering is driving me moderately insane.

Blog Assignment: “What kind of job would you look for if you were graduating in December?”

Screenshot: http://www.apple.com/imac/features.html

If I were to graduate from the safe haven of the journalism school this December, I’m sure that my first move, before I even made any valid attempt to find a job—or, yes, even start my own business, Michael Rosenblum–would involve unadulterated panic.

After all, the news briefings haven’t really done much to boost my morale.

All we’ve been hearing lately are the words “layoffs,” “buyouts” and, subsequently, “print media apocalypse” while all the facts in between regarding the specifics slowly but surely start to sound like the incomprehensible teacher from Charlie Brown. It’s like they’re on a constant loop.

It’s sort of like a broken record broken record…the scratched up soundtrack of the journalism industry.

Guest Speakers: Discussion Points

Photo: http://www.digitalmediatraining.com/media/graphics/products/instructor_pic/rosenblum.jpg

Michael Rosenblum:

Rosenblum seems to be in the business of forging an international network of photogs and information-hungry, yet perhaps incongruously low-tech, one-man band setups. This, as you can imagine, drastically lowers production costs while simultaneously yielding vast amounts of content—due to barely there operating costs, roughly 85 percent of the revenue is pumped into the editorial side, Rosenblum said, which has resulted in the incorporation of this style into a dense bloc of news outlets, including NY1, the New York Times Television, the BBC and Current TV. The lesson, Rosenblum said, is that millions of people are not only willing to make content, but straightforwardly want to do so.

Points for discussion: If millions of people are involved in this hands-on, inexpensive, open-to-all brand of journalism however, how will the increased competition shape the field of journalism? What qualities will determine the best content producer? What will it take to be successful using this model in order to edge out all competitors? Will ‘socially important’ pieces survive, or will they be outwardly replaced by interesting color stories that may have no intrinsic ‘value?’

Rosenblum criticized the Columbia University School of Journalism report on the future of journalism, which stated that major media outlets need to seek financial help from government subsidies or foundation support. He further stated that in the current system, student journalists are manufactured as “good employees” who graduate with the expectation of working under an omnipresent minority of businesspeople, the mysterious ways and methods of whom they will never fully understand for as long as they remain wary of them—in short, they tend to become sort of hopeless, always at the mercy of an outside party in terms of their financial wellbeing. Rosenblum, therefore, believes that journalisms need to eliminate their phobias of the business realm and, in his words, “own the Web and the technology.”

He encouraged his audience to raise their “own money if [they] think something is important,” and to avoid idly waiting for someone else to create it for them.

Points for discussion: Will this change the content of journalism as we now know it? In what ways? Will this be an asset or a detriment to the public as a whole?

Photo: http://www.magazine.org/userdata/content/images/22823/Farnham,%20Brian.JPG

Brian Farnham:

Farnham clearly embraces the potential of local news dissemination as a business model. Although the intent is to eventually start generating some sort of sustainable revenue, this localized approach does have greater implications. Small businesses, for example, stand to benefit tremendously from the advertising services of Patch—Patch now features a “Directory,” or digital yellow pages that offers free listings for community businesses—data fields essentially pull information about the business and yields an SEO-friendly advertisement free of charge to the business owner. Two of the goals of Patch, Farnham said, are to “educate small communities about online advertising” and “examine what a community is, what it wants to know about itself.”

Points for discussion: How will this change consumers’ views about what news is? Will people pay attention to local and national news equally if the Patch model takes hold, or will one supersede the other? How are Patch services better than those provided by a traditional local paper?

Farnham currently relies on local editors at Patch hubs who take on a lot of the workload themselves in terms of making news judgments and calling on freelancers to help with coverage of the community. Several unsolved problems, however, currently exist with this model. How, for example, does one define a ‘community?’ How far outside of town borders can a local reporter reach without confusing the reader about what neighborhood he or she is covering? In addition, when editors post personal profiles on Patch, no one is quite sure how much information is quite appropriate to reveal about oneself. Farnham said that he hoped that dissatisfaction with some aspect of an editor’s profile would generate a comment from the offended party, which, in turn, would breed conversation.

Points for discussion: how will a greater ‘conversational’ element change the face of journalism? How diligently should local reporters stay in town borders?

Questions: Brian Farnham

1) Why do you feel that the ‘conversation’ element is so essential to local news consumption? What is the appeal?

2) How exactly does one launch a Patch division in his or her community? What are the necessary steps? How does an interested party go about assembling a team of working journalists within the community?

3) How large is a typical community staff? How does the pay compare to say, a journalist working at a local print paper?

4) Right now, it seems like Patch is concentrated in one specific region. Do you hope to achieve a more national focus in the future, and how do you plan on accomplishing that?

Jayson Blair at Washington and Lee Ethics Institute

Photo: http://baltimoresun.image2.trb.com/balnews/media/photo/2004-02/11616031.jpg

Today, the journalism department of Washington and Lee University will host its biannual Washington and Lee Journalism Ethics Institute, a two-day examination of the myriad moral challenges facing media professionals in the terrifying ‘real world’ of editorial decision-making.

In past years, the University has pulled esteemed working journalists from the dense briar patch of business-driven morality and paraded them before hordes of students as living case studies of what, in most cases, one could or should do when faced with a seemingly unsolvable ethical equation in his or her line of work.

While keynote speaker positions have generally gone to quasi-superheroes of the industry, however, this year’s honors will go to none other than—drum roll, please—former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair.

I’m sure that many of you already know why the “former” part is significant.

Michael Rosenblum: Questions

1) In your post “How to Make Millions in Journalism,” you respond to a skeptic’s response regarding the alleged inability of distinguished faculty to stray from the obsolescence of the print school of thought by proposing that Columbia simply sever these educators from the program and “start clean.”

My question is then, who is going to replace the missing faculty?

No one has yet completely solved the Internet equation despite repeated efforts to do so–since that is the case, who would you say is qualified or, for that matter, prepared to fill the gap?

2) In this new school of thought, what precisely separates “good employees” from entrepreneurs? Is this a path that all future journalists should follow? Should all student journalists strive to be entrepreneurs, and if not, what would be the alternative to “Entrepreneurial Journalism?”

3) On that note, where would potential ‘investors’ for such a project come from?

Why do you feel they should be willing to invest in a student-generated business plan that may or may not get off the ground?

4) If the “dirty” business side and the “pure” editorial side of the industry were to merge, how do you feel this would influence a news outlet’s coverage of an issue that could negatively influence the business itself?

How does your ideal business model protect news consumers against another ABC-refusing-to-report-on-Disney-World-sex-offenders scenario?

5) In your post regarding the schism between the journalistic ‘church’ and ‘state,’ you replied to a commenter by noting that you don’t think you would feel particularly compelled to read the work of “someone who writes for the pure passion of it and is not interested in getting paid.”

What is your response to those who feel that hyper-local bloggers and citizen journalism represent the future of journalism? Do these models have a place in the foreseeable future?

JRN 301 Review

Photo: http://www.getentrepreneurial.com/operations/10_tips_to_keep_business_afloat.html

I would say, at the very least, that my experience in this class has been positive. Being more or less being forced to scan the feeds every day has exposed me to the a world of remarkable relevance that I somehow, even after two years of heavy journalism coursework, neglected to explore to the fullest—or, for that matter, even the weakest–extent.

I’ll be honest…when I realized that “Journalism 24/7” was just clever slang for “The Business Side of Journalism,” I could have groaned out loud.

In addition to “business,” I heard “math.” I heard “statistics” and “financial jargon” and “hours upon hours of the most boring and time-consuming reading that you will likely ever have to do in your life,” and then, perhaps understandably, I thought, “could I get away with not taking this?”

My opinion, however, has taken a serious 180 since those pessimistic times.

I can’t even explain to you how ignorant I was about the business side of the media industry—I’m sure that anyone who took an interest could have convinced me that major media companies produce revenue through the dark arts.

Simply put, business journalism was about as unfamiliar to me as sports journalism…and to give you a rough idea of how pathetic that is, I can still only name two players on the New York Yankees (Jeter and A-Rod, if you’re curious). In that sense, I do have to say that this class has been a legitimate eye-opener.

I’ll admit that in the past, I’d always deliberately dodged the Media & Advertising section of the New York Times in my frantic quest to dive straight into those articles I suspected would hold precious answers to news quizzes. Even then, I used to get legitimately angry when I opened up the Times only to realize that half the day’s top stories came straight out of the business section. Somehow, I could never get myself too excited about the idea of rummaging through innumerable pages of undecipherable financial terminology—for me, it was the equivalent of Greek.

Now, however, I do understand the significance. If happy-go-lucky Joe Journalist is considering a reporting career, after all, I guess it would be useful for him to have a basic understanding of what models look promising and which look about as exciting as dirt.

The blogging, in addition, has really become somewhat of an unexpected hobby—in short, I find it fun. There’s something about it that’s just intellectually stimulating. This may sound a little weird, but it makes me feel ‘smart’…’informed,’ I guess, is a better word for it. It’s oddly refreshing.

I do, however, have one critique: the constant PowerPoints are getting a little old at this point, (no offense to any recent presenters) and I don’t think that something like that should continue in a class of that size in future semesters.

Of course, I understand that this may have been unavoidable this semester, but in the future, I think that enforcing stricter time limits (not that I’m one to talk—I completely shattered that rule with my Dow Jones PowerPoint) would be something to consider.

Overall, though, I’ve really enjoyed myself in this class. The hour and 20 minutes really goes by quickly…especially considering the fact that one of those time slots just happens to fall on a Friday afternoon.