Ryan Sholin is a grad student at San Jose State University (working on his thesis at this point), and a multimedia journalist at the Santa Cruz Sentinel. While at SJSU, he worked on the web site for the Spartan Daily. He’s been blogging about the changing face of the news business for as long as we have, and was an early reader and supporter of our efforts.

Last week, he caused quite a stir in the mediasphere with a post he wrote on his weblog: 10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head. I took the opportunity to contact Ryan for an interview, conducted via Instant Messaging last night.

ICM: You generated a lot of buzz around the ‘net with your “10 obvious things” post. What prompted you to write that post at this point in time?

Sholin: Well, there’s always newsroom cuts popping up these days, but with big announcements from the SF Chronicle and cuts taking effect at the LA Times and rumors of more cuts at the Mercury News, the handwringing and woe-is-me talk about the newspaper business just hit a fever pitch in my neck of the woods last week.

I started brewing that list up, just really out of frustration at having to repeat the same arguments over and over. It’s all stuff that’s been said before.

ICM: What do you make of all the feedback you’ve been getting about that post?

Sholin: The large majority of the comments, links and emails have been positive, mostly sort of cheering me on, or at least calling attention to the post.

A few reporters from papers like the Chronicle have written and said I was on the right track, which makes me feel good — I’m not trying to demean the work of a lot of journalists that have been at this a lot longer than me; I just want them all to understand that the business — and the craft — is changing, with or without them.

ICM: Which brings up my next question. You were blogging about these things in grad school, and now out in the professional newspaper world. Have you noticed any changes in your newsroom since you’ve been there related to new media ways of thinking?

Sholin: As in all things, there’s a finely tuned ratio of talk to action. I can tell you that I imagine it’s easier for me as someone in the role of a change agent — an evangelist for things like multimedia in the newsroom — than it is for a reporter on deadline writing dailies.

When I was a reporter, both in school and at an internship last summer, it was hard to imagine producing content for the web as well as writing on deadline.

ICM: Are more people starting to do that, or is the web still a focus of a relatively few specialized personnel?

Sholin: I think it’s different at every paper. At the Mercury News, the photographers are really leading the charge at multimedia, and they’re doing amazing work, but in places like Bakersfield, handing out inexpensive point-and-shoot pocket-sized video cameras to reporters has worked wonders. It’s really a new world right now, and not every approach is going to work for every paper.

We really need to use the resources at hand — I think that applies to college papers as well. If you’re using College Publisher, the delivery system is there. You don’t need to develop anything yourself, just find the right balance of audio and video equipment to reporters and photographers, and get creative right away.

ICM: Which nicely segues into my next topic: college media. you just mentioned some advice for college media, but I wonder if you could expand on that some more. Could you offer some general advice for advisers, and then some practical advice for student journalists as well?

Sholin: Heh, you want the short version? I think the best thing advisers can do right now is to read about what’s going on in newspapers as far as multimedia, interactivity and data goes. Get a handle on what is possible, and then find the piece of it that you’re most comfortable with. Not every print adviser is going to jump into Soundslides, but they might see a database project built off public records and say “Hey, I did stuff like that when I was reporting; I can teach that.” Don’t try to take on everything at once.

For students, it’s very much the same piece of advice — get out there and find the work that appeals to you the most. Then learn from it. Critique it, pick it apart, think about what you might do differently, and when you start picking up new skills, put them to use out in public — don’t be afraid to fail. There’s no right answer to how to do this job yet.

ICM: Ok, last question, and I’m going to turn it around a little bit. In your opinion, what’s the worst thing a college newspaper journalist could be doing right now to prepare for their career?

Sholin: Yikes. I’m not going to say that “just” writing stories is the worst thing a student journalist can do, because I know how hard that is, with or without advisers and editors breathing down your neck pitching multimedia. What I will say is that ignoring the changing craft is the worst thing you can do right now.

If you walk into a major metro newspaper right now with five clips and a smile, they better be some pretty amazing clips. I mean, I want to see the president of the university taken down by your investigative reporting if all you have is text on a page.

Your college paper experience is your chance to try anything you want. Try out something outlandish, work at the edges, and you’ll have something to show for it when you’re through.

ICM: OK, anything else you’d like to add for our audience of advisers and student journalists?

Sholin: Mostly it’s that number 10 from the list I made: There is incredible journalism being done out there. Changes in the business and newsroom staffing changes and Google and Craig haven’t stopped journalists from doing amazing work. Find yourself a favorite piece of online journalism, get in touch with the journalists who reported it, and you’ll find out how passionate online journalists are about the mission of newspapers and the craft of reporting.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.