Late to the carnival … trying to find the time
May 26, 2008 in Carnival of Journalism
Ryan Sholin asks the following question for this month’s Carnival of Journalism: #
What should news organizations stop doing, today, immediately, to make more time for innovation? #Unfortunately, I’m a little bit late to get in on the carnival this month, and there are a LOT of great suggestions that have already rolled into the big tents. #
But I would like to narrow the question down a bit for the college audience. I think there are different considerations that should go into the equation for university organizations. Part of the purpose of these organizations, after all, is to train future journalists. #
So, for example, while I might counsel a professional newspaper to stop requiring reporters to come into the office and stop having so many meetings about story budgets, I wouldn’t necessarily do the same for a college news outlet. Beginning reporters (mostly volunteers) NEED to meet face-to-face with editors and advisers. Editors need face-to-face time with advisers and those budding young reporters. #
So what can a campus news organization do? I’ll throw it open to the readers (and my fellow carnival participants). #
I can’t say I have many answers right now (stop e-mailing finished stories to editors in MS Word format, cut down on the amount of AP content), but maybe we’ll get some more soon. #
I think the single most important discussions that should be happening at the college media level is: "what media are best suited to covering this story?"
Photos? Video? Live video? A straight story? Blogging? Live blogging? College media give young journalists an incredible opportunity to experiment with covering different stories with different media, and thus develop a feel for what works best and in what circumstances.
If they miss this opportunity, and just emulate what they see traditional media doing, then journalism as a whole will be poorer.
I think people need to open their minds – especially those who are print-oriented.
From my experience, the print staff has a hard time letting the online staff experiment. I think the online staff is almost getting used to having their ideas shot down.
In the spring, there was a bit of controversy when the managing editor online said she wanted to post stories to Twitter right after the budget meeting. The editor said he didn't want the local paper to scoop us from our Twitter account.
What he was overlooking is that the local paper can't scoop you if it's on your Web site – or your tweets – first!
This lack of experiment or adventure will ultimately stunt a paper's Web-based growth and lower the online staff's morale, which would obviously be detrimental.