Media Is Not a Spectator Sport: Notes for my talk
Halloween morning, Justin Crawford and I will be leading a discussion with journalism grad students at the University of Colorado. The topic we were given is rather amorphous: "blogging and citizen journalism."
Well the good thing about an amorphous assignment is that I can make of it pretty much what I choose. So that's exactly what I'm doing.
Here are my notes for that talk. I've also posted Justin's notes.
To start with, this past weekend I had the opportunity to speak with many journalism students at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. I even taught some of them how to blog, so they could contribute to the unofficial SEJ2006 blog. I also got a chance to speak with many journalism educators. These are all very bright people.
Still, I got the strong impression that journalism education today remains focused almost entirely on traditional print/broadcast media -- not just in terms of technology, but also by instilling a mindset which assumes a passive audience that absorbs news, rather than engaging an active community that contributes to news.
Here are a few thoughts and tips for how today's journalism students (and other budding or not-so-budding journalists) can capitalize on a media landscape that has shifted strongly toward participation and conversation...
For context: Justin will be talking first. After that, here are the main points I intend to toss into the discussion.
...And this WILL be a discussion. I don't do lectures. So if these notes seem scant, that's because they're a mere springboard to the conversation.
- Traditional journalism skills will always help. You aren't wasting your time in j-school. Of course, experience matters more than training, but training gives you a strong start. Skills like interviewing, crafting a story, production, fact checking, ethical grounding, and more will always be in demand because audiences and communities demand credible coverage.
- Don't expect to be getting the same kind of reporting job that reporters have been getting for most of the last century. News is coming from a lot of different places besides newsrooms. You might end up working for Google, or a nonprofit, or creating your own news venture.
- Get involved with your core communities. Who is your news for? The competition for their attention and loyalty is fiercer than ever. You'll stand a better chance of attracting, retaining, and growing a constituency to support your work if you actively engage them and help them get involved in crafting the news that concerns then. Community liaison skills, including leveraging citizen journalists, is an increasingly marketable skill that can help journalists do better work and find more professional opportunities.
- Follow and join conversations. Conversational media will become an increasingly major part of how your find, develop, and distribute news. Learn how to use feeds -- especially setting up search feeds -- to keep abreast of new content and discussions efficiently. Comment on blogs, forums, e-mail lists, and more -- and use comment tracking tools to stay connected to those conversations. When you post anything online, remember that conversations are as powerful (and often more powerful) than publications.
OK, those are a few points for discussion. And now, a few links...
- My tutorial: What are feeds and why should you care?
- Free web-based feed readers (good for starting out): Newsgator and Bloglines
- A few popular feed aggregation services: Technorati, Icerocket (Amy's favorite), BlogPulse
- Comment tracking: CoComment, Co.mments.com
- Blogging tools: Typepad, WordPress
- Citizen journalism starting points: Center for Citizen Media, J-Lab, YourHub
- Conversational media for journalists: Notes for a similar talk I gave last week at the SEJ conference.
...I'm sure I'll cover more stuff in the session, and I'll update this post later to include links that come up during the discussion.
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