Paul Conley wrote something the other day that spurred this post, a late addition to the Carnival of Journalism (April edition).

Conley notes an Editor & Publisher article about newly displaced print editors looking for work as journalism instructors. Conley is succinct, as usual, in his assessment:

it’s not in the interest of journalism students for schools to hire people who either can’t or won’t adjust to the changes in media. Heck, journalism schools are already filled with people who don’t understand modern journalism. And there’s little doubt that those teachers have been producing graduates who are ill-prepared for the workforce.

Over the past 7 years as an adviser and instructor, I’ve watched the tide slowly shifting as professors and college media advisers have faced the challenges that impact their industry. Anecdotes are all I can offer, but I’ve seen some journalism professors who’ve been around for more than 20 years who face the future with a keen interest, and others who are still mired in the past. Ditto with advisers.

My sense of things now is that even if someone is entirely dismissive of new media (online media, multimedia, whatever you want to call it), they are not as prone to display their contempt as they were, say, three years ago.

I would add to Paul’s comments by saying that people leaving the industry shouldn’t look to academia as a place to hide. Right now, academic journalism is pushing forward to keep pace with the industry, even as the industry’s pace of change ramps up further. In our department, we’re trying to figure out ways to get students engaged with online/multimedia tools early in the sequence so that they are skilled when they leave. If a retiring editor doesn’t like using blogs in the workplace, I can’t imagine they’ll like using blogs for class assignments (which I see more and more of, btw).

For most of the past five years, I’ve followed the academic journalism job market pretty closely, partly out of my own employment concerns, and partly because I ran the job board for College Media Advisers, Inc. The trends during that time showed a lot more desire for people who could understand, teach, or research in the area of multimedia or convergence. There were lots of positions open for Public Relations/Advertising, a good number of broadcast TV/radio positions, and multimedia positions. Print positions were not as well-represented, and the competition in those areas is already fierce.

In the advising sphere, it’s not much better.

College media outlets are scrambling to replace declining ad revenues just like their “professional” media counterparts. They have the challenge of training students for the skills they’ll need in the future while maintaining their traditional media imprints - no small feat with a mostly volunteer staff.

And a final word of caution for an editor hoping to make the jump from industry to academia (especially in an advising role), there’s an old saying: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. In most student media settings, advising is mostly a post hoc enterprise. The adviser doesn’t “tell” the students what to put in the paper, how to write the stories, where to go for coverage - unless the adviser is asked.

That could be a heavy transition for a newspaper editor to make.

With all of that said, I’m keen to see the day when some of the multimedia whiz kids return to colleges to do some advising, teaching and research. But I suspect that won’t be for a while. The industry needs that young blood and is willing to pay more for those skilled practitioners right now.

Most of you know I have been testing the new 5.0 or polopoly version for College Publisher going on 4 months. I have been getting many emails and questions at the conventions about what it is like but by far the biggest question that gets put to me is in the vien of “we are thinking of switching but want to know what the new 5.0 system has to offer before we jump ship.” Note, this isn’t a direct quote from any one just a general wording.

I think since the problems of the “j run errors” many advisors and students are frustrated with CP and that is why many are looking at other options. Additionally, we all have probably attended or followed sessions on “new media” and our students now want to try some of these great things we have all learned about. Things which may not be easy to do, if possible at all under the current 4.0 system.

At the core however, I feel many advisors are over looking some key points. I quickly broke down what I see as positives and negatives for the CP system. This is a short list and by no means complete. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments section.

(more…)

I have the business sense of a squirrel, but even I can see a disturbing financial trend for our student media here. We’ve been looking at our quarterly income statements today, wondering how to stop the bleeding. Ad revenue looks to be down 20 to 25 percent from last year at this time. We had hoped that the problem was local – that we were doing something wrong and could find a way to fix it. But after hearing from business advisers from around the country, it looks as though nearly everyone’s in the same boat. National advertising appears to be the primary culprit, but local has been tough, too.

We’re finding areas to make cuts, but really, personnel is the only place to make a significant dent. So we either hire fewer reporters, photographers, designers, etc., and ask more of our already-overworked editors, or we reduce all staff and start printing smaller papers with less local content and – gasp – maybe even less frequently. And in the process, we sacrifice part of our educational mission.

So my question for Innovation in College Media is this: Are college media nearing a point where we need to invent new business models to sustain ourselves? Of course new media is part of that mix, but it’s still not a major source of revenue (at least not here). The print product still pays almost all of the bills. Meanwhile, fewer people read newspapers.

Do we look for revenue aside from advertising? What might that look like? Do we publish a printed newspaper less frequently, and attempt to drive readers to an innovative Web site in hopes that they won’t give up on us altogether? Will advertisers support that? Do we create niche publications?

And, can we get good advice from professional news media, other than “Welcome to the real world?”

I don’t know any of these answers. I’m hoping some of you might.

This Friday, I spent most of the day with faculty and students at Simpson College in Iowa, as a visiting outside consultant. Simpson’s Communication department is looking at ways to revamp their curriculum for the future. While there, I got to meet with the editors of The Simpsonian, the nation’s oldest continuously published student newspaper, and talk about college media in general and how they can better use their web presence.

Thanks to Brian Steffen for the invitation and the hospitality.

The first week of publication each fall means, for me, getting back into the routine of doing a daily critique. The critique is my most important, day-to-day teaching tool. Every adviser does it a little differently, but for me it consists of a marked-up newspaper, a written sheet or two stapled on top, and then the same written material placed online so students can access it from anywhere. I try to view the paper and Web site as a typical reader, raising questions and comments the public might have. 

A thorough critique takes time – particularly when done over the course of a typically busy newsroom day. I try to make myself start early and be mostly done by noon, before the newsroom fills with students and everyone’s occupied with tomorrow’s paper instead of today’s. 

If the critique isn’t done and placed in the newsroom by early afternoon, students start asking about it. They read it religiously; I always tell them it’s one person’s take on that day’s product and that they shouldn’t put too much stock in it. But they do. Creative people – writers, photographers, designers – crave feedback on their work. I’ve realized over the years that the daily critique is often the only constructive feedback our students get.  

I’ve also realized that, once they graduate, it may be a long time before they get thorough feedback on their work. At small dailies and weeklies, only the best editors find time for regular critiques. The rest starve their staffers, who end up leaving because they aren’t growing. 

My process has become more complicated over the years, as more and more students have wanted feedback. Our Web site has lots of unique material, so I need to comment on a few items there each day. Our online radio station produces daily podcasts; those need attention, too. Most days, there just isn’t time to focus on everything. So I’ll direct most of the comments to the most prominent issue that day. Most often, I focus on good reporting and writing. Sometimes it’s grammar and style problems. Sometimes it’s photo composition, or good design. But I do try to include at least one daily comment on each major aspect of the paper: reporting, writing, editing, design, photo, online. The critique needs to relevant to every student every day. 

I’d be interested to see comments from other advisers / students / alumni about different forms critiques can take. What works for you?

These are the last few days of quiet. A student media office is a creepy place when no students are around. The fun of this job is the energy level found in a newsroom full of motivated students. This week, though, I need the quiet as I plan for our newsroom training week.

We’ll pack a whole lot of information into next week – how-to sessions in all departments and, in particular, legal and ethical issues our students will need to understand. We’ve found that before classes start is the only time we have their undivided attention.

Here’s the hard lesson about training, though: Its ultimate success does not depend on my teaching skills, or those of Maria, our business adviser. We’ve taught the same material to different staffs over the years with widely varying results.

My teaching, enthusiasm and overall credibility as adviser all play some role with the whole staff. But what matters more is helping to shape the attitudes of the top editors. The staff takes its cues from them – not me – on just about every issue: the level of professionalism in their journalism and general office atmosphere … the spirit of fun that either pervades this place or doesn’t … the focus or lack of focus on tangible goals … and the amount of grumbling about low pay. 

Which is why we spend the first couple of training days with just the managers and editors. Sure, we go over newsroom basics. But it’s more about setting a tone. What we’re really doing is formally putting the Northern Star into their hands. The year’s success level rests with them. We can give them tools and support, but the ship is theirs.

Early in my career as an adviser, that was one of the toughest adjustments. I spent 10 years as a daily newspaper reporter and editor. Everything about those jobs was hands-on. The quality of each day’s paper depended a lot on me. Whereas, an adviser’s role is – to quote an old article by Ron Johnson – “train ’em and trust ’em.”

In that order. That’s why next week is so important.

There’s an early episode of “The Cosby Show” where Cliff’s daughter brings a new boyfriend home. He says that once he finishes high school, he wants to take a year to find himself. And Cliff responds, “In a year, you should be able to find yourself … and three or four other people.”

In the past several years, I’ve noticed an increasing number of talented students and recent grads who don’t seem all that interested in entering – or remaining in – the journalism world. They choose to take 6 months or a year to “find themselves.” That sounds noble but it often ends up where they “find themselves” living back with their parents, paying off credit card bills they ran up in college and working at Starbucks. But … they don’t seem all that upset that they’ve left the newspaper world so soon.

Sure, there are also those driven student journalists who can spot opportunity and take advantage of it. But the balance seems to have shifted some. Even while they’re still in college, I find it harder to sell students on the idea of college media being an investment for them. For one, leisure time is something fewer students seem willing to sacrifice. Maybe that mind-set is carrying over into their first jobs.

So I’m wondering if we as advisers aren’t doing a good job of “selling” this as a career, or if more students are simply seeing something out there they don’t like.

And I’m also wondering if I sound like someone’s cranky grandpa who starts every sentence with, “In my day …”

UPDATE: Be sure to read John Robinson’s take on this topic: Finding yourselves in journalism - ed.

Melissa Worden points out the deadline for the 2007 Online News Association awards: June 30, 2007. Here are complete details.

There’s one category that should interest college media types:

 Student journalism: This category honors excellence in digital journalism by a student or team reporting on a single story or issue. The work must have appeared originally in a student- or school-based Web site and have been created by full-time student(s) (at the time of publication). Unpublished entries do not qualify.

Cost of entry is $50-$100, depending on how many visitors your site gets each month. I’d love to see a college media outlet win this award, as opposed to the class-produced projects that usually crop up in this type of contest. Nothing against those folks, but producing multimedia on deadline for a student-directed publication is vastly different from coming up with one whiz-bang project with the help of professors during an entire semester.

I’ve spent the past two days at the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star, specifically to soak up the culture change of a newsroom that has committed to putting all breaking news online first. What I soaked up was a completely new world.

For a few years as an adviser, I would spend a couple of weeks every summer in that newsroom, either as a reporter or a copy editor. My bosses at NIU were smart enough to see the value in this and allow me a couple of weeks away when the students weren’t around. It’s been several years now since I’ve done this – completely my fault and far too long, I quickly realized.

The newsroom looks the same and many of the same faces are there, but everything has changed.

One reporter and one copy editor start at 6 a.m., writing and filing short stories for the Web. These range from briefs, like a quick weather forecast and overnight police and fire reports, to full-blown scoops. This morning, for example, an acquaintance in Hong Kong e-mailed one of the editors an AP photo of a Rockford-area woman who was a contestant on Bob Barker’s final “The Price Is Right” show, taped yesterday. Before 7 a.m., the reporter, Sadie Gurman, had localized the AP story about Barker and it was online. By 8, she had spoken by cell phone to the local winner, still in Los Angeles, and had filed another update. Turns out that the woman was the show’s big winner, snagging two cars, a cruise and other stuff.

Online readers knew all of this a full 24 hours earlier than they would have just a couple years ago, when editors would have simply prepared the story for the next day’s paper and then sat on it, praying that competing TV and radio stations didn’t find out about it. The story would have made it onto the Web site, but only after the print edition hit the streets.  

No longer. “News Now” stories are posted online every few minutes and show up as a scrolling list at the top of the homepage, each with a time stamp. Where once the paper updated its site three or four times on a good day, today 40, 50, 60 daily updates are commonplace. The record stands at 71, I’m told.

Sure, there’s risk that electronic competitors will see these stories, pursue them and air them before the next day’s paper comes out. Too bad. The term I heard often was “repurpose,” as in repurposing the day’s online content for the next day’s newspaper. Not the other way around.

Project stories and non-breaking news often still get published simultaneously in print and online (after being promoted online). Sometimes longer versions of the online updates appear in print the next day. But everything is carefully integrated. User traffic to the day’s online updates stories helps determine story placement in both media.

Reporters have at their disposal several “mojo” – short for mobile journalist – backpacks. Each is stocked with a laptop computer equipped with a cellular phone card; a point-and-shoot digital camera that also can shoot digital; a digital audio recorder and a detachable microphone. Photographers are being trained to shoot and edit video; I spent a large chunk of this morning watching photographer/videographer Alan Leon edit a piece about a man with brain cancer.

It’s one thing to know and understand that these kinds of changes are occurring in journalism. It’s quite another to spend time in a newsroom where it’s happening. Compare it to the difference between studying a foreign language and spending time in the country where it’s spoken.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for advisers to regularly spend a day or two in an online-oriented newsroom. I once did this yearly exercise simply to keep my skills sharp. By the end of the two weeks I’d feel pretty confident that my reporting and editing skills weren’t wasting away. After the past two days, I realize I now have to do it or risk falling hopelessly behind the relevancy curve.

I plan to visit a couple of other, similar newsrooms this summer. It’s not so much about the reporting and editing. Those I can still do. And it’s not about trying to learn the latest video-editing software. That might only depress me. It’s about knowing the newsroom culture my students will step into once they graduate. Not just knowing about it. Knowing it. Only then can I help prepare them for it.

UPDATE 2: The IDS now has a special blog devoted to Dave Adams for those who want to drop by and share thoughts and memories.

UPDATE: You can read some about the impact Dave had on those he mentored at the IDS Deadline blog. Drop by and share your thoughts and memories there.

There’s no easy way to write that a giant in your industry is no longer here. Word out of Bloomington today is that IU’s Student Media Director David L. Adams died last night. Here’s the story from the Indiana Daily Student: IDS publisher dead at 59.

I’ll post more as I find out more. There’s a statement from CMA President Lance Speere on the CMA website:

CMA has lost a dear, dear friend. I’m stunned and saddened. I’ve known David since my earliest days in college media and he was someone I knew I could always count on both as a friend and a colleague. Words will never fully pay tribute to everything David has meant to student media and to so many people.

The CMA board will certainly look at ways to honor David’s memory, and we welcome any suggestions from the membership.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to David’s closest friends and family.

David has commented on our weblog previously, and we’d exchanged e-mails and greetings at conferences. His passion for student media and free expression are something we can all learn from in college media.

Our thoughts are with his family, friends and co-workers.