Still think blogs aren’t journalism?
June 20th, 2007 by BryanA little news last week that has a college media twist: Brian Stelter of TVNewser has been hired by the New York Times to report on the media. What’s the college media angle? Stelter’s most recent gig was as editor-in-chief of the Towson University student newspaper the Towerlight - while he continued writing the TVNewser blog.
Jeff Jarvis makes a good point:
Pay attention, journalism students: When I suggest that you blog, this is what I’m talking about. Take a beat. Add journalism to the discussion around it. Answer a need. And if you’re good, good things can happen.
Pay attention, also, editors: There is talent working outside your newsroom. Go find that talent. Nurture it. You don’t even have to hire it.
I had a private e-mail exchange with an adviser last week who fretted about journalism students who were starting weblogs outside the umbrella of the student media organization at the school. The question: “what are they not getting from us that makes them want to go out and do this on their own?”
Students are beginning to catch on to the need to be savvy about new media - testing the waters by writing a weblog is just one way for them to do so. Being exposed to the do-it-yourself publishing platform of blogging can be a heady experience for someone who’s used to working in a traditional media setting.
My encouragement was that advisers need to find ways to encourage that kind of innovative thinking within their news organizations. That can be difficult in a hierarchically-oriented news setting. But it can be done.
I hope to have more to say about this soon.
June 24th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
I spoke to a group of college students recently and warned them that with newspaper budgets growing ever more tight, the number of traditional internships is likely to decline. They’ll just be cut from the budget.
So, my suggestion was they contact a newspaper’s Web site and pitch and idea for a blog. They looked at me like I had three heads, at first. But on the way out, a few folks stopped by and said they were going to try it.
In the near future (in this case, now) blog entries serve as legitimate clips.
And there are a lot of sites out there desperate for more original content.