Gannett's Asheville editor is frank about the changes

With all the turmoil at Gannett this week, Columbia Journalism Review's Corey Hutchins has landed a rather frank interview with Joshua Awtry, editor overseeing the Asheville Citizen-Times in North Carolina and The Greenville News in South Carolina.

Among some of Awtry's lines:

• "I will not hire a digital producer who doesn’t have a strong grasp of editing."
• "The Carolinas will have a full-time beer reporter. Right now, both Asheville and Greenville have beer reporters in different fashions. Asheville has a reporter who does a lot of beer coverage but has to pick up other things too. In Greenville the beer reporter also covers the nuclear energy plant.
  "When layoffs have happened in the past, it was, 'This position is gone and we need you to do these jobs,' and peoples’ lives have gotten, I think, needlessly hectic. And this is a chance to set up reporters around really, really deep coverage areas. Having a reporter who covers beer and the nuclear energy industry, I don’t know which of those two halves he’s reporting on."
• "The public has gotten so good at detecting when they’re being fed something."

That last line is refreshing -- and intriguing. There's no reason to believe Awtry is not being straightforward. On the other hand, Gannett's record can easily make one feel like a Missourian -- "Show me."

So we'll wait and see. But I'd recommend you read the interview.

As usual, McIntyre nails it on the vanishing copy editor

John McIntyre has once again nailed it when it comes to commenting on the vanishing copy editor.

I have become so tired of things that I just kind of shrugged with Digital First announced it was effectively doing away with copy editors at the Denver Post and Bay Area News Group. The cuts took effect yesterday, and here are a few of John's comments from his perch atop the copy editing and production process inside the Baltimore Sun:

When explanations of these and similar changes are made, there is talk of moving away from "assembly-line editing" and "outmoded nineteenth-century industrial processes" to some bold, modern, fresh, immediate journalism that removes all those unnecessary "touches" between the writer and the reader.
This is, of course, cant. The brutal facts are these: Terrified by declines in revenue, newspapers are shedding employees to save money. They are attempting to keep as many reporters as possible to generate content, and they are gambling that you will tolerate shoddier work.

To make this new era work effectively, with the editing/production tasks shifted upstream to the writing/editing level, will require some cultural changes about which I am deeply skeptical.
Reporters tend not to be production-oriented. They want to report and write and take as much time as they can. The question I've most frequently heard from reporters over the past thirty-plus years is "What's my deadline?" (And from assigning editors, too.) Some reporters, as you can see from reading their blogs, cannot even be troubled to run spell-check before publishing.
What you can expect from the copy-editor-free newsroom is a first-draft text from a writer to which someone bearing the title of editor will have made a quick swipe before posting it online. You will notice the typos and lapses in grammar and usage, which stand out. What you may not be so quick to notice is that the reporting is often thin, superficial, uncritical, because no one was there to pose hard questions.

Mr. Brady is right that the old model is passing away or already gone, not to return. Mr. Moore and other editors are right to explore new models, to see what can best serve the needs of the organization and the readers. Editors, people like me and the dwindling band of survivors of the purges, are right to focus on what is most essential for accuracy and clarity. There never was much of what you might call bespoke editing at newspapers, and there's going to be much less now.
If we are smart enough, and lucky enough, we will discover the balance between those feet on the street and those eyes on the desk.

Good for newspapers, maybe, but for journalism?

Thanks to Lou Phelps of the Savannah Daily News in a column this week for making brutally clear that newspapering is a business - a cutthroat one - that's not necessarily good for journalism.

 Phelps, a media consultant whose company also publishes the Daily News, seeks to make the point that, when looked at from a cash-flow perspective, newspapering is still a pretty decent business and that "we are far from dead," especially smaller community papers:

For smaller publishers still operating their own presses who need to spend $150,000 for computer-to-plate equipment, or $250,000 on press improvements, these incentives will help them cut their payrolls and newsprint waste, helping to make their companies even stronger in future years.

I agree with Phelps, who also looks at Lee, McClatchy and Gannett and finds that they would be in decent shape if it weren't for their crushing debt and depreciation payments. Traditional media companies are going to have to move earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization (EBITDA) closer to bottom-line earnings.

This month's Common Sense Journalism column is going to use an example out of Iowa to argue that if trad media companies want to thrive among the nimblest of new-media companies, they are going to have to write down and throw off more of the real estate, "big iron" and "big silicon" they find themselves writing down and tied to. They have become storefronts on the information highway, and, frankly, they probably ought to be operating out of storefronts, or close to it.

Phelps, however, takes it a step further, nicely drawing the distinction between newspapering as a business and journalism:

Unlike many business sectors, our expenses are tied very tightly to revenue. And, our industry, generally, is not burdened with significant research and development costs or patent attorneys, such as those in the drug or manufacturing sectors.

Take a restaurant, for example. It has to have employees standing there to cook and serve, and has to purchase the food items listed on the menu whether customers come in the door on Friday night or not.

Not so with the newspaper business. If our ad revenues decline, we cut newsprint/ink usage, we buy fewer stories and photographs, and we don't pay sales commissions (particularly optimum if sales reps are on straight commission.) Well-run newspaper companies have controlled all of their overhead and operating expenses, and changed their staffing strategies to be able to adjust to these vagaries.

Granted, some companies were late to that party and paid dearly in 2008 and 2009 as they struggled to believe that advertising revenues would not rebound - and took too long to cut.

But by 2010, most newspaper companies came to grips with the future, and began to admit to each other ... "It's amazing how few people it actually takes to run a newspaper company, isn't it?" as one distinguished newspaper owner in Georgia said to me last year.

And, we all began to cut like crazy.

 Exactly. Newspapering doesn't take (relatively) a lot of resources. Journalism does.


To keep things in perspective, The Savannah Daily News is not the traditionally dominant paper (the Savannah Morning News, daily circulation about 35,000, is). It's a free, low-staff operation (perhaps it's significant that the paper's "about us" page is blank, though this is on the subscription form: Welcome to readership of Savannah Daily News, locally owned and edited by professional journals. Be sure to sign up your family members...and we how you will consider recommending us to your friend and associates. ---Founded in 2004, Savannah Daily News is the region's FREE daily news source. SDN is locally owned, with news stories written daily by respected journalists who live in and love the Savannah, Coastal Georgia and the Lowcountry.)

I couldn't readily find any circulation figures, but it doesn't matter, because I think the sentiments Phelps expresses are shared by many others in the industry looking for low-cost, turn key solutions to what ails them (which Phelps will happily supply through her Community Daily News LLC).

As Phelps notes, newspaper companies are "not burdened with significant research and development costs." Which goes a long way to explaining why newspaper companies are finding it so hard to merge onto the new information - and journalism - highway.

Got those journalism blues

Sure, things are tough in the business. Reporters are being given Sisyphean lists of things to do in this age of social media, bringing the predictable backlash.

But hey, what good is it if you can't sing about it? Awhile back, the "Copy Editor's Lament" went viral (well, OK, maybe it was just a slight sniffle, but still it was fun).

The latest entry, from the Texas Center for Community Journalism, is worthy of a watch/listen. If you've got those journalism blues, pour a glass of your favorite adult beverage, lean back, flip on the video and nod along. Time to get in a mellow mood before the holiday tryptophan kicks in.



That "journalism blues" link also helpfully has the words so you can sing along - or for that next karaoke night.

Winston-Salem copy desk's last day

Sad but classy good-bye to Winston-Salem Journal's copy desk that is going away under Media General's consolidation:

WaPo layoffs again raise print vs. web talk

These are strange times we live in. Times when, from what I can tell about visiting, working in, and consulting with newsrooms and just shooting the bull with lot of journalists, we make Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde look like pikers when it comes to shifting personalities over the digital vs. the print.*

The latest to put this in bas relief are the layoffs at the Washington Post online operations, including, apparently, well-respected journalist Travis Fox.

Every so often an eruption will occur and venom, or at least highly acidic comments, will pour out from the "printies" and the "web heads." I trace it to about a year and a half ago, during the July Fourth weekend, when Media General laid off folks at its Tampa operation. An intern, Jessica DaSilva, blogged about it and appeared to take praise management for its forward thinkingness - and the knives came out and all bets were off.

Until that time, there seemed to be an uneasy truce between "trad" media folk who were tolerating the online whippersnappers and the digital folk who were convinced that the mainstream media types were clearly the problem and the answer was to stop being paticularly tolerant and just sweep them away (read all 200 + comments to DaSilva's post and you'll see what I mean). For several months, at least, the rhetorical wars seemed to escalate before calming down. But I sensed a shift had occurred, a wall of civility had been breached, never to be truly patched over again.

From time to time it flares up again, as it has with the WaPo layoffs. Read the comments on the Washington City Paper story and then read Matthew Ingram's thoughtful post on the subject.

For about a year, in my other hat as executive editor of The Convergence Newsletter, I've been trying to get some interest in someone doing a piece that looks at the rhetorical exchanges. Am I right, will historians look back and find that on that July 2008 weekend things did change irrevocably?

Comments here welcome, but even more welcome would be someone to take up the challenge (I've not written it myself because rhetoric is one of those areas where I know just enough to be dangerous). No money is involved (we're a publication that tries to span academics and the real world, after all). All I can do is offer 600-1,200 words and a byline in a newsletter with 1,000-plus international circulation.

---
*Strange phenomenon I have noticed is that in many newsrooms people know what needs to be done. They are not clueless. But they are paralyzed by inability to act in a coherent way. They know the dragon is at the door, but they alternatively want to get the fire extinguisher or just pretend it's a puddy kat.

Stupid Layoffs

Add this one to the list -- Brian Throckmorton, copy chief at the Lexington (Ky.) Herald Leader.

Brian has been one of the leaders in the word business - thoughtful, insightful, fun to be around and always a great seminar to attend at ACES.

The gutting of the industry continues. May it rest in peace.

Spoken like a true AP vet

I didn't have nearly as long at the AP (18 years) as Richard Pyle (49), but a lot of memories come flooding back of what a rocking place it was to work, starting with Pyle's first response to Dana Kennedy's asking him to "wax romantic" on the occasion of his and about 100 others' departure as the AP cleans out its veterans:

Oh, Christ, I don't have time. I'm up to my ass in trying to retire. It's very difficult, all the bullshit and bureaucracy, it's the worst part of it.

Meanwhile, AP's PR man, Paul Colford, says of the recent round of buyouts:

"No doubt yesterday was an unusual day at AP, with so many veteran colleagues leaving at once."

Way to go, Paul.

----
A couple of other great quotes from the Pyle interview that I identify with:

I once heard the AP described as the Marine Corps of journalism. You know, we take the beach and then everyone else comes in with the heavy artillery -- and we're in there to the bitter end as well.

I never felt office politics was a big issue. Every place I worked in the AP, the focus seemed to be on doing the job.

There's so much emphasis on celebrity coverage, even at the AP. I don't even like the word celebrity. I don't know what the hell that word means. It's disappointing. There's been a decline in standards and this new attitude about covering the news as opinion. Nobody should give a rat's ass about a reporter's opinion.

Report from the field - humbled by layoffs

A few months ago, one of my former students was going through a rough time. The person had been laid off twice and was going through those self-worth questions that become so common. At the time, I asked this former student to write about the experience for this blog, partly to help as therapy. I held onto it for a bit, and then it slipped into the e-mail abyss.

I found it again today and reread it, and I think it's worth posting as putting a human face on what has happened in our industry.

Only, to this story there is a happy ending - at least for now. The person has gotten another job at a newspaper. Both of us are keeping our fingers crossed ...

Layoffs are a humbling experience. I’ve been through two within three months.

The first time was a shock. I moved back to my beloved hometown with my first management job in hand and stars in my eyes. This was the prime opportunity I had been looking for to come home and to move up a notch in the journalism food chain. I left a recently purchased home and friends I’d made in my five years elsewhere in the state. I was well aware of the state of the industry, but I was hoping that I’d maybe dodged a bullet.

Not so much: After eight months, I was laid off. Profitability was the reason I was given. Trust me, had I known they were considering cuts, I wouldn’t have bothered trying for a year and a half to get that job.

I was unemployed for two months – the longest I have ever gone without a job. I learned about unemployment insurance, and I watched helplessly as the governor decried the situation at the state’s unemployment commission. I thought to myself as I filled out my unemployment papers, "How am I going to feed my family? It’s not like jobs are falling off trees these days." Every day was the same old grind: Get up, search for jobs online, fix lunch, continue search for jobs, eat dinner and work on a newsletter I put out on the side. On Mondays the routine changed a little: I would apply for my unemployment. Otherwise, that’s what I did for the two months I wasn’t working.

Weeks went by; Thanksgiving and Christmas passed me by, and the days started running together. I talked to friends and mentors in the industry to let them know my status.

About that time I saw an opening for a job in Georgia. I jumped at the opportunity, and I got the job. I enjoyed getting back to work. But the industry's woes followed me. Nearly six weeks after I began working, I was laid off again. I’d just signed my benefits statement, and my spouse and I were looking at apartments.

Layoffs are part of the landscape for the foreseeable future. It’s a way of life now for me, and after two I’m starting to wonder about my worth as a worker. At 27, I’m living at home with my parent and spouse, but I have a four-year degree. There is something wrong with that picture. For work I have options. I can stay in the industry and try again because of my relative young age, or I can go back to school for something else and get out of the industry altogether.

I love journalism, and copy editing is all I have ever done since graduating. I was impressed enough with the field to try to do it for a living six years ago, and I wish that I could stay in it. I just don’t know if I can with the dire situation that we as a people are in right now. South Carolina is ranked third in the nation in unemployment, and judging by the number of people I saw while reapplying for my benefits, I think it’s safe to say we’re in a lot of trouble. I can’t speak for the newspapers in the state, but there aren’t jobs literally falling off trees in South Carolina.

Right now, I’m taking it day by day and putting my name out in the open to see what jobs I can scrounge together. With some luck I will be able to stay in my hometown, but I’m not opposed to moving. Rather, I’m opposed to remaining out of work.

Trib Modules

In case you missed it in the past couple of weeks, all the carnage at the Tribune papers' desks appears traceable back to the modules the Trib is starting to roll out among all its papers.

PDFs of national, international and business pages have started rolling out of Chicago. In a bit of irony, as one memo notes, after all the redesign work done at some of the Trib papers to establish their local identity, they're being forced to run Trib typefaces.

Not surprising, all this. Members of the Suburban Newspaper Association returned from a trip to Scandanavia last year all a ga-ga over template-driven editing, also known as "layout-driven editing."(Here's more from a Canadian Newspaper Association story, and you can request a copy of the SNA report for free.)

Most interesting from that memo:

Templated newspaper -- Rather than the current, standard arrangement whereby the ad folks sell as many ads as they can and we fill in the newshole that's left, the paper is going to have a set ad layout depending on the day of the week, so in theory we would be able to plan a paper days or weeks ahead knowing exactly what it is going to look like.

Anyone told the ad boys and girls yet? Seems like that's a potentially serious crimp in their income.

Lest you be surprised, this has been evolving for more than a decade. There's a reason all those 10 a.m. editorial meetings started in the 1980 and '90s. It's called preplanning a much as possible. Accounting hates breaking news.

From Steve Yelvington at Morris: Read my lips: This is not a temporary maneuver in response to an economic cycle. This is permanent structural change.

Just as I feared, dammit

Have had my nose buried in grading and getting senior semester copy prepared all week as we close the semester, so I had this really, really bad feeling after seeing the news that The Baltimore Sun had cut a third of its newsroom -- 61 positions.

So I guess I was not surprised when I went to John McIntyre's blog this morning, just po'd. John, the AME of desks at the Sun and a good friend, was among those cut.

The Sun's ax fell heavily on management positions - 21 according to the various stories -- with the object being to keep reporters and reposition as a Web-heavy, social media, online-first operation. Good enough

But not good.

McIntyre was one of the good -- really good - guys in this business, someone who cares for language, accuracy and, above all, journalism. And beyond that, a gentleman above all else. As usual, he made his exit on his Sun blog with class.

He is a former president of the American Copy Editors Society, and so perhaps it's eerily fitting that this happens in the same week ACES is gathering in -- or rather straggling into (BTW, I recommend David Sullivan's post for so many more reasons than that little aside) -- Minneapolis, its future and that of many of its members far from clear.

For me, this goes beyond "newspapering" or "news" or "journalism" or whatever we want to call it today. It's a bit of a death in the family -- the family of folks I have come to know as friends and colleagues who care deeply about language and journalism & etc.

Oh sure, McIntyre isn't dead, and he promises to be blogging elsewhere. That seems to be the phrase of the age, doesn't it -- see you on the blog - somewhere else. I'll be sure to link. But it's unfortunate it probably won't be at the Sun. The "paper" could use the digital "juice."

Update: John's new blog is http://johnemcintyre.blogspot.com/
Columnist Laura Vozzella has a column lamenting John's leaving and praising his work: Last seen in a bow tie, columnist's dictionary goes missing.
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The best line of the 80+ comments on his blog lamenting John's leaving comes from one Mark Murphy: Hearing that a newspaper has laid off John McIntyre is like hearing that Noah has laid off the one crew member who knows the most about caulking.

Stupid layoffs

Yeah, I know, no layoffs are good. But today's layoffs at The State, including nine newsroom workers, included editorial page editor Brad Warthen.

File this under "stupid."

Warthen, love him or hate him -- and many people did both -- "got" the Web. He wasn't necessarily one of the first - the paper's toe-dipping online kept that from happening -- but once there he went at it hard, aggressively and with some innovation (incorporating video, etc.).

You sort of knew this was coming, however. The State, as have many papers, has severely trimmed its editorial section, some days running, in essence, just letters to the editor.

Among others reportedly cut: editorial cartoonist Robert Ariail (again, no surprise, but just as sad; it was a bit of a point of pride to live in a town with a paper with a cartoonist of his caliber) and metro editor Christi Shayne (though her husband, Andy, stays on for now running the business pages).

Other names surfacing:
Reporter Robin Nalepa
Reporter/arts critic: Jeffrey Day
Online editor: Tonyia McGirt
Assistant sports editor Mark Lawrence

South Carolina has long been referred to as "too small to be a state, to large to be an insane asylum." We all knew this was coming, but the sad part is that between these cuts and others around the state, the inmates are now much more likely to be able to run the asylum.

Connecticut papers sold

With two Connecticut papers just 10 days from extinction, the former publisher of BostonNOW, Michael Schroeder, has stepped up to buy them and three weeklies from struggling Journal-Register.

BostonNOW, a freesheet, had a meteoric rise and just as quick a fall as its investors pulled out.

Wonder what Lucas Grindley will have to say about the new venture.

Meanwhile ....

The Tulsa World lays off 28, 26 of them from the newsroom.

"Two years of carnage ahead"

Ah, such an upbeat report from the Future of Journalism project in Australia.
As quoted in the Australian (because, apparently, the folks involved haven't figured how to put this on the Web yet -- at least as of this filing I see no link):

A report, Life in the Clickstream: The Future of Journalism, released today by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, warns that the Western media industry faces "two years of carnage", squeezed by the global economic meltdown and the unravelling of traditional economic models.

The report reveals that more than 12,000 journalists worldwide have lost their jobs so far this year.

Commentators from around the world warn the multiplying effects of cost-cutting and reduced quality could result in the collapse of the US's biggest media companies, while in Britain it is predicted that between five and 11 newspapers will vanish.

Emily Bell, The Guardian's content director, warns Britain could be left without a single British-owned broadcaster outside of the BBC and the once vibrant regional media market faces near annihilation.

Ah, sunny days.

Actually, I think Rupert Murdoch, for all his perceived faults, had it right last week when he told a lecture series sponsored by the Australian Broadcast Corp.:

Murdoch, whose company's holdings also include MySpace and The Wall Street Journal, criticized what he described as a culture of "complacency and condescension" in some newsrooms.

"The complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly--and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. The condescension that many show their readers is an even bigger problem. It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception."

And David Sullivan, commenting on the layoffs of 125 in Norfolk, has it right when he points out the Internet is competition, not just another territory to be conquered by the media. Or as someone recently put it (I forget where I read it), the challenge is to do online journalism, not just journalism online.

Goodbye Dan, Hello Dan

It's worth noting a moment of passing today.

It's Dan Conover's "last" day at the Charleston Post and Courier. (Actually, he left the newsroom on Aug. 22, but his stuff has been running till today.)

He's largely stopped blogging at Conover on Media and moved over to Xark, a group blog (though he does the bulk of the postings).

Anyhow, I suspect Dan is not going to be idle, so while it's tempting to say S.C. journalism will miss him, I don't think he'll be out of the mix.

Touching Video - AJC farewell

From Alan Mutter, the Newsosaur, a pointer to a touching video put together about all the Atlanta Journal-Constitution staffers (70+) who departed in a round of buyouts last week. It takes 23 minutes to say all the farewells.

Timely advice on getting jobs in hard times

You could do a lot worse in this world than read John Zhu's series of four posts on "How to (Voluntarily) Become an Ex-Journalist."

Zhu, who did time at the Durham Herald-Sun before moving to other pastures in the "Triangle," has some excellent advice. His second part, especially, should be read not only by those in the business who are wondering when they'll get "the call," but also by those looking to enter the business (yes, believe it or not, we still have some of those).

Zhu points to another site of note: We Were Print. You'll find some good advice there, too. Not sure who is behind it, but it seems to have a heavy contingent of former Cox staffers, especially Palm Beach.

Some interesting numbers (and more layoffs)

Some interesting numbers out this week.

From the Seeking Alpha blog, the latest Web numbers touted by the Newspaper Association of America -- newspaper Web sites' average unique audience up to 64.4 million for second quarter, 12% over last year. Sounds good, right? Except that the numbers also show almost no increase in the visits per person (8.08 vs 7.82) or aggregate time spent on site (40 minutes each quarter - or barely the time that used to be spent on one good day with the paper). Yes, the argument can be made that if we can figure how to better monetize targeted ads (instead of the ROP banners), that audience should be more valuable. Key word there -- should.

Meanwhile, a new report (PDF) from Integrated Media Measurement holds no joy for TV folks, either. It says up to 20 percent of TV viewing is online, and of that, half of those see online TV as a replacement for broadcast/cable. (Media Post story.) Over at AR&D, however, Terry Heaton does caution that while the report is important, you should take a good look at the methods used.

And another number no one will be happy about - the latest in the drumbeat of "paper cuts." The publisher of the Newark Star-Ledger told nonunion employees today that 200 of them have to go and that if the paper can't reach agreement with its drivers' and mailers' unions, the paper, New Jersey's largest, will be sold. Sad that the news comes on the heels of the S-L's start of its Webcast, another sign of changing attitudes in the newsroom.

Copy Editors, the end is near & other quick hits

On the other side of the pond, British writer and sub editor Justin Williams predicts:

You have a window in which you can save your career in journalism. But that window is closing and will be tight shut within the next six to 12 months.

Your immediate boss is probably so deep down in the bunker that he or she is not going to help you with this. You’ve got to do something about it yourself.

His Survival Guide for Sub Editors and Other Curmudgenons has 12 things he thinks you should be doing right now if you are a copy editor. Among them:

• Accept the buyout if you're within seven years of retiring and don't have kids in college or a big mortgage. It can be "an enormously liberating thing."
• Learn the content management system and learn about search engine optimisation.
• "Stop fighting about working arrangements and get on with it."
• Stop pestering the communities editor for a blog and start generating some real content that might actually drive some traffic our way. Acquaint yourself with what (within the boundaries of taste and decency) plays well on the aggregators and then dive deep into the blogosphere to find the weird stuff that drives traffic.

Anyhow, you get the idea.

Some other things worth reading:

• Tony Curzon Price's The Blind Newsmaker has been out since January on Open Democracy, but I hadn't seen it till recently. He makes some good points, echoing some I've made here, about the value of "core" journalism in a digital age (hint, not a lot), and he suggests the optimism that digital alternatives will be able to replace the newspaper's role are misplaced.
• One thing I've noticed lately is a turn in all the discussion about business models. Where it used to be "if we keep working on it, someone will find it," now creeping in is a bit of doubt about whether a true business model for journalism will ever be found. Ryan Sholin begins wading into the question. Be sure to follow the links in the comments, especially to Seamus McCaulley who writes: Maybe the elephant in the room is a reluctance to even think of newspapers (or journalism or whatever you want to call it) in business terms. Because if we did, we wouldn't start with the premise "since we're definitely going to keep making journalism, how can we pay for it?" We'd already be thinking "is there enough of a market for journalism to keep doing it?" And nobody wants the answer to that question, because we kind of know already what it probably is. (Sort of bringing us back around to Price's essay and my earlier thoughts on this blog about journalism's value.)
• And Nicolas Kayser-Bril follows up with an online question in which 100 people in the Chicago area on Facebook chose what they most could not live without. Fast-food joints were at 31%, football players at 27% and high school teachers at 24%. Journalists came in fourth at 10 % and auto mechanics at 8%. There are so many ways to attack polls like this, despite Kayser-Bril's note that the results are "statistically significant," but it does give you some food for thought. It might be a fascinating poll to do with a rigorously sampled population.
• Speaking of online questions, back across the pond again, Paul Bradshaw of the Online Journalism Blog poses the question: Should we be teaching students for a journalism industry that doesn't really seem to want them -- or as Paul puts it "isn't exactly splashing out on job ads at the moment." He posed the video question; the responses aren't very hopeful. I especially like Andy Dickenson's thoughts. Pat Thornton says he learned almost nothing in j-school that applied to what he is doing in the real world. (Thornton's post-school experience, it should be noted, has been largely that of Web editor and related posts; I still think a reporting position might have a different view. And though I agree with him that we silo too much by medium, I wonder sometimes if we unfairly lump any kind of writing and editing instruction into "print" when what we really are trying to teach are the exacting journalism skills that have been more closely associated with print but transcend it when executed well.)

I leave you with this quote from Kevin Anderson of The Guardian that I think says so much:

So many journalists think ‘If I’m a good writer, that’s all I need’. That’s bullshit. There is an arrogance among journalists about the craft of writing. Journalism students will need more than the ability to craft a good sentence.”

His post is so good, I'm embedding it below (you'll find his comment at 6 minutes in):

Reuven Frank - words to chew on

Was rummaging through some things the other day and came across a quote I'd copied and attributed to Reuven Frank, former NBC News president and one of the pioneers in broadcast news (and, were he around today, likely online too).

I'm not sure where I got it; probably saw it some trade mag many years ago, and it just hit a chord. In light of all the recent upheaval in the news biz, I thought it worth sharing:

Journalism is a job, not a calling.
Journalists are employed, not ordained.

Now, I'm not sure I totally agree with the "calling" bit; I think the best journalists have a little bit of that in them. But still, it's something to chew on.