2008 objectives for today’s non-wired journalist

This is a useful, practical and wise list.

Let’s all give Howard Owens a rousing year-end round of applause for this and other posts,and for keeping faith with newspapers! Too many Howards have thrown in the towel and moved on to more rewarding pastures.

Nice job Howard!
I will disseminate (by fax if necessary to a few of the challenged folks out there.
Good on you, and keep on keeping on.
As for Twitter, I agree with your friends who find it essential. Check out today’s feed on Bhutto at Twitters such as this: http://twitter.com/BreakingNewsOn

Good list. I have a few friends who keep saying they want to learn this stuff but haven’t figured out where to start, so I think I’ll send it off to them. Don’t think I’m eligible myself since a) I’m already doing all of that and b) I don’t have an employer (I’m a freelancer).

I have to agree with Megan on MySpace. Hurts my eyes to look at it, and Facebook has done far more for me personally and professionally, which might be because it has a somewhat tighter audience.

Howard, I disagree with you about the BlackBerry. As a BB owner myself, it’s been extremely valuable for me as a journalist and much more useful than the text messaging.

Google offers a great deal of applications for the BB, the best of which is Gmail. I don’t even have to set up my BB account’s email. I can just download the Gmail app, login and presto! — all my mail on a phone. Best of all, it’s got a search function built in.

Plus, you can avoid having to pay SMS fees to use Twitter on the BB by downloading the TwitterBerry application, which is free.

Howard, it’s a great start for those who truly need help. But Wendy, Kiyoshi, et al have good points too and understanding their perspective is key to becoming a good wired journalist *after* a non-wired journalist makes that initial leap.

I’ve always seen technology like any beat one would cover — it’s not that it’s necessary to know all the answers, just the right questions to ask. Not everyone has the time or the interest in using all of this stuff (A Facebook addiction alone can waste hours of your day), but a good journalist should know how to access, contribute and assess the value of the information it delivers.

Fear, indifference and hubris are causes? It’s shortsighted and a touch sanctimonious to ignore the 300-lb. gorilla root issue – the crushing workload the daily newspaper reporter has to deal with anymore. I had 287 bylines in my last year and spend far too many hours off the clock working already. I don’t say that in a ‘woe is me,’ but to make a point that blaming reporters for not having the technology abilities they should when their bosses are running them into the ground with increased demands (do more with less, cover the same stuff we used to cover when our staff was a third larger, do web versions of your stories now now now) is to blame the victim.

Howard,

Laudable, but you should set your target higher. Offer the award to an unwired EIC, managing editor or other executive-level editor. They are more apt to be unwired anyway. Get one of those techno-savvy and you help a whole newsroom.

We have some young journalists that will benefit from trying to do everything on this list. Thanks!

Aren’t bonuses usually given just managers?

Shoot, already done all of those things. Guess no $100 for me! Great list, anyway.

Reminds me of an MBO plan I had 10 years ago with a huge list of tasks with a maximum $250 bonus. Too much work for too little reward, and thus a quintessential newspaper-industry incentive plan.

Ah, I love the cynicism of newspaper people.

Hey, sorry I can’t afford more than that.

However, should you really be doing this for the money? Should you be doing ANYTHING in journalism for the money?

The flip-side, of course, is don’t do these things, if you don’t INVEST in your own career, then all I can say is, enjoy your second career at Wal-Mart. It will be tough finding and keeping a journalism job when you don’t have the requisition skills, knowledge and experience, not to mention the learning mindset required to succeed in modern journalism. I don’t care how many Pulitzer nominations you have for your print work. You need to get this stuff.

@ Buddy Brad, while it is certainly open to an EIC … hell, I’ll extend the offer to publishers, too … but in my travels around the industry, I’m hard pressed to find top executives who are still technophobes. That may have been the case five or six years ago, but I don’t believe it’s the case today. Most of the resistance to change remains at the sub-editor and reporter level (and age has nothing to do with it).

@ Amy, I hear ya, but my passion and my profession is in the newspaper business. That’s where I’m laying my bets for now. That’s where I want to make a difference.

@ Linda, I’m thrilled you’re going to adopt this in Rockford.

“Most of the resistance to change remains at the sub-editor and reporter level (and age has nothing to do with it).”

Both true and completely strange to me. I can’t find the post, but I recall someone on Mindy McAdams’ blog saying they got into this industry because of the glamor of black-and-white movies on ye good olde newspapering dayes. The poster in question didn’t want to learn to play this game online, fresh out of journalism school. Hell, one of my co-workers, our photographer, says he would never want to learn to shoot video (I, lowly writer, am learning it in my spare time). He’s my age; I’m 25.

I just really can’t imagine what motivates people to say, ‘No, I don’t want to learn how to use technology to better do my job.’ But I guess that’s what I get for getting into this field in part because I read too much of Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan.

PS – Howard, good stuff. I’m only on twitter and Facebook right now, but really, I need to start editing video and putting it online ASAP. I wouldn’t say this list is my motivation to get networked – I want to do that because I want to have a job in journalism in another five years – but this is very good to see. Kudos!

So, everyone understands that it’s really not about the products (unless your pocketbook is pinched because you shelled out the cash for a Blackberry instead of your newspaper). It’s really not about having a Facebook account unless you really want one.

Right? Everyone gets that it is about understanding the ways people communicate, making efficient use of it and not becoming too attached to it because it will inevitably evolve or fade away… right?

If the answer is in any way “no”, then use the $100 for a small offsite for your employees — pizza, a laptop and projector, and a tour of the various sites. Show why Don Graham has a LinkedIn profile but not a MySpace or Facebook page… but also show how you can find great interview subjects on these sites. Talk about why Rosie O’Donnell no longer does interviews but responds directly on her website… and the implications of how the media redistributes (and sometimes, manipulates) what she posts. Discuss the “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” aspects of blogging.

And if you want to comfort those who mourn the supposed loss of shoe-leather journalism, tell them it’s coming soon to a VR near you.

Interesting list. I guess I’m not eligible either, though. I quit my newspaper job in August after nearly 14 years and am taking a year to work on a master’s degree in graphic design, with a focus on Web and multimedia design. So, I think I may do all the things on your list by the end of the year, and then some.
Coulda used the hundred bucks, though. All this digital equipment is getting pretty darn expensive.

People do not want to do extra work. Period. In any industry. And there is nothing wrong with that. Reporters and editors want to do their jobs, go home, and spend time with their families and friends.

Most reporters and editors (including me) I know know all this stuff already. Of course we do. Most of us these days are young people who go on YouTube, read blogs, and use MySpace when we can in our free time. We are perfectly happy to do that during work, but our time is taken up filling up the space of boring weekly papers for our 80 year-old readers. Once our company tells us we don’t have to do that anymore, we could make the switch to online journalism within a day.

Until then, as much as we care about journalism, we believe we have as much a right to a 40 hour work week and a reasonable salary as anyone else.

Stop trying to make us feel like dinosaurs for believing that.

Howard, you’re blaming the problems newspapers are having on the lowest level people in an organization and then you wonder why you’re getting so much resistance. If I made online my priority and the few people left in my understaffed newsroom made online a priority, the print editions of our newspapers simply would cease to exist and then we would get fired.

Your cheerleading (and that of people like you) is not helping moral, it is hurting it.

My purpose here isn’t to raise morale. It’s to promote change.

Without change, we die. Without change, good journalism dies.

Either you join in the fight, or you’re welcome to work for Wal=Mart.

This isn’t about my company or your company, my job or your job, it’s about saving quality journalism. Either you have the heart for the fight, or you don’t. But we need people with the heart for the fight.

Becky, a lot of news organizations are changing their out-dated, backward policies.

Of course, a little bottom-aggitation for change makes some sense … you could always pass this post along to the bosses …

accidently posted before finishing…

If my 60-something neighbor looks up Benazir Bhutto’s son’s Facebook page because she read about it on Time.com, it means whoever covers that beat better have already done that, and:

- tried to connect with him on Facebook, and;

- looked to see if he had any other social networking accounts, and;

- knows the places he regularly posts, and;

- understands who else is watching him through these same avenues and is figuring out the connecting thread to them in case he needs to get in touch with them.

Thanks for the list and the reasoning. I’ll be using your post in my grad class on online media (at Cronkite/ASU): validation that it’s not “academic” to add these skills to journalists’ capabilities. In fact, the list correlates well with the course’s assignments. I hope lots of journalists take you up on your offer.

About the Ceo & facebook…The point wasn’t to just link to the boss. It was to find the right one, see what he has done with Facebook, follow some practices.

Unfotunately, I found that I had to connect dots for people. Why should sales reps get on Facebook? To see the new types of advertising. What are they responding to? Why?
Why should the content people be there? To see how people are getting and using information. To make connections, to learn.

Never did I expect people to spend workhours uploading pictures of their kids, poking each other and fighting zombies.

When you are ‘playing’ for work, I want you to think: How can I use this to do my job better? How will the people who buy what I sell – be that words, images,ads or concepts- use this? What do I need to know

Facebook is one example. There are so many things available is looking and using them any different from reading the competition? Did someone once have to suggest to a newspaper person to pick up and read that other newspaper in town?

Ok. I know I am preaching to the wrong folks

I don’t need to be converted to a webcentric way of thinking and working after making the switch to online news work three years ago following more than 20 years as a print head. (And feeling as though I had been given a second life in this profession.)

But I also don’t need this “without change, we die. without change, good journalism dies” nonsense either.

The good practical advice suggested in the original post was undermined by techno-evangelistic preachiness that just turns people off. I’ve already done most of the things on your list, and folks, there really isn’t anything to fear.

But even those of us who work the web full-time are overwhelmed by what we have to do just to keep up. I want to soak up more of this, Howard, but there aren’t enough hours in the day.

Hectoring the worker bees is easy. But we’re not the ones determining how to allocate resources, designing training programs and setting other newsroom priorities.

Perhaps you should send your list to those who do, if you haven’t already.

I’m fortunate enough to have been working online for over 6 years for a major publisher, and blogged everything I’ve discovered, made great connections, and been offered new positions because of it.

I work with a mix of people, some who embrace the change, and some who resist it. I understand the fact it can be hard to change the attitude of managers, and that time is a precious resource.

But the simple fact is that if you don’t make the time, others will. Journalism has never been a 9-5.30pm job, and never will be. And since joining online media, I’ve accepted that I may get a phone call at 2am with a breaking story which has to be published within minutes – but the payoff is the joy of breaking a story before anyone else, and getting the respect and rewards for doing the best job possible.

In an era when things are rapidly changing, and there are no ‘safe’ career jobs, developing your skills and networks has to be an ongoing thing to ensure you develop.

And by doing so, you may find that blog you start, or those videos you shoot, can make you enough money that you no longer need to work for a major publisher for a regular wage.

It always takes an effort to change, and to be a leader rather than a sheep. But maybe, there’s a worthwhile payoff in being known and respected for leading?

After all, I’ve been responsible for hiring staff, and this year has marked the tipping point where the time and effort in hiring someone who isn’t already using blogs, networks and social tools and then training them, means that those applications will be straight to the bottom of the pile.

The main site I work on gets more traffic from a social aggregation site than most of the big portals or service providers. If someone in publishing, whether it’s journalism, marketing, or publishing, isn’t driven enough to promote themselves by those tools, then why would they be driven enough to do a great job for my company or product?

It does need managers etc to support such a drive for it to become widespread. But knowing, and being, a manager, when it does turn, it’ll be overnight, and management will suddenly look to hire people with the right skills, not spend another six months waiting for their staff to catch up…

Howard:

This is a wonderful and succinct list. Anyone who wants to understand what is happening right now has to get their hands dirty. Saying “I don’t have enough time” simply doesn’t cut it. Find the time. Find spare time. Do this on your weekend. Invest in yourself.

If anything, this is just a start. There is much to learn – for all of us. If we don’t like it, there is a whole generation of young reporters coming up who will happily take our jobs. Not only will they do the work – they expect to, and they’re stunned when they enter 21st century newsrooms with 20th century (or worse) ideas.

I will do what I can to spread this list. Thank you for taking the time to put it together and giving so much thought to it.

Sorry, Howard, but I think you missed my point.

I have been “investing” in my career for the past three years and remain bullish on the possibilities of web journalism. But my frustrations are best summed up as follows from Steve Outing’s excellent piece in E & P. I wish I had written this:

“My wish: That you could fix the incredibly dysfunctional culture in the newsroom,” wrote an editor from one of the large metro newspapers in the U.S., who asked not to be named. In the past year, that paper’s top management decided to put the web first in all ways and went into major restructuing mode. The paper’s website, this editor reports, went over the last half decade from a small group of people to “the total focus of our news gathering efforts.”

“But the big problem is that the newsroom culture hasn’t changed enough to support the kind of innovation that the paper’s leaders are trying to implement, the editor says. “Somehow the people who do the work always get overlooked in the ‘fixing.’ We are ignored. We are shifted around like widgets. Our experience is disregarded. Our ideas are received with indulgent pats on the head. … I get the need for young voices and fresh approaches. But the environment, the existing culture, has to allow and encourage innovation. All the ‘process mapping’ in the world won’t fix that. ‘Culture’ is much harder to fix than ‘process.’”

From a fully wired journalist who is starting to think I missed the giant gulp of Kool-Aid here: While the entire newsroom is out documenting their last trip to the bathroom on Twitter, who is sitting through the last five minutes of the city council meeting where elected officials just gave away the store to some well-connected developer? What stories in the past year generated the most online page views at my newspaper? Classic follow-the-money journalism done by professionals with killer sources and the ability to gather mountains of (gasp!) paper files no one wants the public to see.

At best, this article and its subsequent responses and cross-examinations are horribly misguided. At worst, it’s a colossal waste of time, filled with whining and finger-pointing by the 98 percent of pseudojournalists who won’t ever resolve any problems or challenge any of the industry’s numerous half-wits.

The fastest way for this industry to improve, if it has any hope left of doing so, is to cast aside the design-based approach and to take on the lazy, gutless MEs and the non-editing city editors. Until that Axis of Evil is attacked relentlessly and daily, the problems will continue. Again: Target the worthless AMEs of presentation, the gutless MEs who cower in their office and the do-nothing CEs.

Now go forward and make us proud (at least the 2 percent of you who have some guts and some brains; the other 98 percent should feel free to go back to cowering under their desks, reading SND manuals and pretending to be the next Royko).

Uh, Michelle. Sometimes this stuff doesn’t come via computer.

Nathan, you haven’t spent a lot of time studying the history of the news business, have you?

Technology never changes journalism.

Society changes the news business.

The fundamentals of journalism, going back to the 1830s, have changed EVERY TIME society has changed.

Society has changed. Journalism hasn’t. That’s why our business is dying.

Learn the tools, so you can learn how society has changed.

If you’re only hiring according to a skill set suitable only to a society that no longer exists, good luck staying in business.

Nathan, you’re still talking about technology, not societal changes.

I’m so glad to have stumbled across your site! These are great suggestions – I graduated 6 years ago without really having paid much attention to technical matters, beyond using email. I’m keen to use the potential of my blog better to reach a wider audience with my writing. Thanks for the inspiration.

Miguel, I’ve got three or four recent posts that address your points. You might want to read those.

Very useful list. I’ve done a condensed translation into Portuguese to publish it in my blog, and also shared it with my colleagues of profession. Thanks a lot.

http://dauroveras.blogspot.com/2008/01/11-metas-para-jornalistas-ainda-no.html

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