J-school reboot?

 

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Some probably know I have no formal training or education in journalism (did the grammar and headline burying give it away?), so I tend to feel less comfortable talking to journalist-specific topics.  I have the luxury today of stepping out of my comfort zone thanks to a crafty piece of writing from Guy Berger (@guyberger).

 

The rhetorical premise behind Guy’s post was whether journalism schools should be a mirror of the industry’s requirements or a enablers of change for the industry.  I cannot do Guy’s words justice and I really do encourage you to read his article.

Guy does close by asking,

“Anyone out there agree that journalism education needs re-booting?”

As I mentioned, I probably wouldn’t know a j-school if it hit me, but my answer is a resounding “YES.”  Guy isn’t just stirring things up for fun – this guy understands that the media customer is already on the other side of the fence.  He participated in a book panel and provided input, of which I wanted to share a couple sentence.

In a time when cellphones are becoming the mass communications device of the masses, this realm is increasingly important to look at. And what becomes complicated is that the “traditional” mass communication roles now become merged with private interpersonal communications in the uses to which these new technologies are put. Audience expectations of the roles of mass media are arguably changing under this meshing of one-to-many with one-to-one and many-to-one communications.

Go back and read those sentences again, please.  That really takes the mirror v. change agent a different and, in my opinion, mostly relevant direction: the audience.  Oh yeah, those dreaded readers and customers?  If that’s your reaction, I submit that Guy’s words fell on deaf ears.  The fact is that he is spot on.

There is no question the audience expectations are out in front of the industry.  When and where the audience and their expectations got out in front of journalism is a fruitless debate.  What is of concern is the audience expects content, in context (their context, not some editor’s choice of context), in real-time and from whatever device they choose.  Journalism by the inch and line, however comfortable, convenient and profitable (decreasingly) it might be argued to be, is dying. 

J-schools are where the bounds of innovation towards atomization of content, technology-enabled/driven networking and customized delivery and consumption must be pushed.  By now, at least one person is rolling their eyes and chuckling about the paucity of proven business models, whether pay walls are the way to go, and concerns about the trustworthiness of all this new-fangled stuff.  News flash for you – at no time in the future are you going to wake up to a neatly packaged print article that describes a totally packaged answered to all that.  The answers are going to be small, dispersed and  available only to those who are truly willing to hit the reboot switch (repeatedly).  Where else is better suited for those reboots than the beginning of the industry pipeline, the journalism schools?

You’re doing WHAT?!

It never ceases to amaze me how a concept can be explained multiple times yet be welcomed with reactions ranging from misinterpretation to mockery. I’m not sure if it is resistance to change, dismissal of clear indicators of changes in public news consumption or just those who make up the “what I heard you saying” sect of our society?

The industry reaction has ranged from those who factually reported our actions (layoffs, newsroom transformation, etc.) all the way to a few who have scoffed at our actions. There are plenty of objective accounts of our recent actions and those are to be appreciated for their factual merit. There is also a sprinkling of industry folks laying out extremely personal interpretations of our actions, some of which are patently misinformed. A case in point is the article in the Iowa Independent. “I know that adjusting a newsroom from a print-only model to a print-and-online model can be difficult…” DING – no, but thanks for playing. This has nothing to do with going from a print-only model to a print-and-online model. The Gazette has been online for years already via a web site, an e-edition, a mobile version and text alerts. A critical piece to understanding the name and role of Information Content Conductor is that person is not acting specifically towards one product, print or online. That person and their staff are product agnostic. It just goes to prove the old saying that if you are going to make a mental leap, make sure you can at least see the other side!

Interestingly enough, I have found the public consumer reaction to be more aligned to the concepts of content and information. I would reference a KGAN article as proof the consumer is highly attuned to the content and information. Run a quick article search on “content” and you get 3 very pointed uses of the word content. Do the same with the word “information” and you will get 13 hits on that word, most singing the praises of the breadth and depth of information. These are words being used by the public, not by us. Heck, KGAN is not even on one of our company sites – it’s a competitor’s site! On a side note about the article, I wanted to note many respondents to KGAN mentioned the Gazette by name, even though “newspaper” was the only term used in the question. Thank you, loyal community members!

Whether they realize it or not, the public provides us a mandate, that being they desire content that is convenient, timely and can be trusted. Some want it in print. We are there already and will continue to be there as we have been for now 126 years, providing the region’s premier and evolving print edition. Some want it electronically and we are taking bold steps to reinforce and expand our current electronic offerings. The key here is that we are retooling ourselves to create and gather content with no specific product-based agenda, make that electronic journalist’s “notepad” publicly available and still create the region’s best array of packaged news products, whether they be print or electronic.

In case you think I am just a kook, you might want to check out this article – another vote for the “upstarts, new players, that build the successful news products of the future.”