Sharing my new media thoughts to the world.

This week is a very historic week for the Missouri School of Journalism. We are celebrating the school’s cenennial and dedicating the Reynolds Journalism Institute. I’m very lucky to be a part of this event in many ways. The coolest is how I’m helping manage 100+ freshmen and a handful of upperclassmen who will pour through the events, document them and post what they gather to a blog, Flickr and YouTube. I’m exhausted with all of the planning but I look forward to finding out what we can do with this project.

In its simplest form, students will document the sessions. In the extreme form they will do that and collect photos, additional interviews and video. While some centennial reporters blog, I have another group of teams who will take Flip cameras and interview alumni for a massive YouTube project that I’ve mentioned on this blog before. I’m looking for alumni to share their experiences gained through the Missouri School of Journalism and their many jobs that followed. (Most journalist don’t stick around in one newsroom for long… Others are fortunate to work in the same one for a long time. I’m hoping we get all kinds of perspective) In the end of the project, I and a small team of students hope to create playlists of these interviews that have useful insight for the many industries represented by J-school graduates.

I will probably blog here with more insight after the event since I can’t even think right now due to the many logistics that go into this!!

Of all the things I do online, I’ve found this blog is the one that gets the least amount of attention. It’s too bad since it’s the one place where I can really think about my career and the many projects I work on. This summer was not boring. I helped a group of students blog from Beijing while they worked for the public relations arm of the Olympics. They blogged about their experiences for two months in China. From time to time they also shared news reports that I used on the air. It’s so cool to be able to share video from across the globe so easily.

I’ve thought a lot about why I don’t seem to blog enough in this space and I realized why — I spend a lot more time on Twitter and Facebook. It’s a way I share and communicate my thoughts and ideas. But I’ve pondered over whether that is productive or not. To me, Facebook is more personal and not as professional (although I try to keep things relatively professional on my page). Twitter is a great space to share and communicate with professionals AND people with similar interests outside of work. I am able to learn about so many things and share many thoughts in a quick manner. That simplicity allows me to stay in touch and see what is important to so many people compared to the time it would take to read each person’s blog posts. But that got me thinking about this blog. Twitter seems so fleeting. The information shared is brief and often not a full thought. Blogs allow those ideas to flesh out and breathe.

I asked around Twitter to see how many other people have noticed a decrease in their blogging - and many consistent Twitter members agreed their blogging has taken a hit. It makes me think that I should try harder to break free of the 140 character discussions and share my thoughts here. I’m sure someone else would shudder when I say this, but I think blogging is more permanent. It’s a distinct record of thoughts from a moment in time. I should try to commit to spending more time here!

I have some big changes as a new semester starts at the Missouri School of Journalism. For this school year, I have a chance to focus on some pet projects and less time in the newsroom. I’m not leaving it completely, but I will be able to spend more time on Smart Decision 2008. I have some big ideas and I hope to be able to share those big ideas here soon.

I attended the first day of the Carnegie-Knight Conference on the Future of Journalism today in Cambridge, MA. It’s hosted by the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, & Public Policy. It’s a culmination of a number of initiatives and conferences hosted by the organization. I wanted to share the discourse and thoughts presented during this event. I tweeted all four panels during the day. If you’d like to read all of the tweets (from the newest down to the oldest) click here to download the pdf. I figured I’d give a quick overview of the discussions for each panel.

1) Working Journalists and the Changing News Environment
Moderator: Rem Reider (American Journalism Review)
Carl Stepp (University of Maryland)
Tom Fiedler (Boston University/Harvard University)
Philip Meyer (UNC)
Jennifer McKim (Orange County Register – Neiman Fellow at Harvard)

This was an interesting start to the conference. There were a number of very different opinions on the state of the professional journalism industry. It started with Carl Stepp talking about his belief that managers need to give journalists more freedom to think and invent. He thinks it’s possible one person in a newsroom could change the entire industry.

Tom Fiedler countered and said the business model will have to come from someone on the outside. He thinks the temperament of journalists is to do what they love and that’s gathering news. They aren’t going to be the people who are inclined to worry about a business model. It doesn’t fit their role.

Jennifer McKim (who is a Neiman Fellow) talked about how there are many demoralized professionals in the industry… But they have the passion and talent and want this industry to work.

Philip Meyer has a lot to say after the first three folks. He had an idea that has a lot of buzz in the room: Find a business model that is supported by the elites. A multi-step flow of information would eventually get that information to the general public. CCJ’s Mark Carter mentioned The Economist as a possible model. There were audience members questioning if that was a viable business model on a smaller readership/viewership level.

2) Communication Research and the Changing News Environment
Tom Patterson (Shorenstein Center, Harvard)
Robert Entman (George Washington University)
Scott Althaus (University of Illinois)
Vincent Price (University of Pennyslvania)

I’d hate to bury the lead on the next panel but the highlight happened near the end. I’ll just quickly summarize this portion of the conference. The group talked about how there’s a discord between scholarly journalistic research and the practice of journalism. My favorite quote from Robert Entman was his thoughts on the state of the journalistic industry: “changing course may be the less risky path.” He may be right.

Scott Althaus showed how just a little knowledge of the past can give a ton of context to how we cover the news of today. He showed combat video from WWI through Iraq and the varying degrees of reality journalists showed through video.

Vincent Price talked about the mainstream media in perspective of the political season. He looked at what is new, what hasn’t changed and the effects changes have on news. His overall message: the mainstream media (MSM) operations are now working in a much more complicated environment. The interactions between the MSM and all of the current information sources (supplementary campaign information, web, audiences) will continue to change the way information is transmitted. He commented on how entertainment can bring the audience to MSM but its up to us to turn that into a teachable moment.

But since the overall message from the group was to encourage practicing journalists to use scholarly research, the most interesting comment was made. Ira Chinoy from Maryland asked the opposite of the researchers. He asked the question over whether it was possible for there to be a problem with scholarly activity. Then he offered a couple of suggestions. First is to have the scholars write for a general audience. He also suggested scholars take the time to conduct confrontation interviews before releasing studies with a one-sided result. If not, give an opportunity for a pre-publication review by some kind of representative audience. There were all kinds of murmur about that. Entman retorted that the current scholarly community looks down upon researchers who publish for the general public.

3) Citizen Journalism
Clyde Bentley (University of Missouri)
Jan Schaffer (J-Lab)
Ryan Thornburg (University of North Carolina)
Steve Yelvington (Morris Communications, Founder of BlufftonToday.com)

Clyde Bentley talked about his work with MyMissourian.com and research on citizen journalism (CJ). He likened CJ to cave drawing from long ago. He also compared citizen journalists to members of the national guard: a citizen soldier doesn’t want a career in the military, he or she just wants to help. Bentley also talked about how Martin Luther could be credited with starting citizen journalism. He opened the idea to the general public to question priests. He showed other forms of current CJ and the differences between how traditional journalists cover information while citizen journalists share information.

Jan Schaffer had some great thoughts on this topic as well. She showed so many ideas and projects that the J-Lab has sponsored. She talked about the trends and how the journalism of the future is the “architecture of participation.” Ordinary people become the “plankton” in the “media ecosystem.” In some ways, journalists would have the job to sift through the plankton to come up with a functioning ecosystem. Another thought that I enjoyed is how this “isn’t about covering community, it’s about building community.” CJs or as Jan put it, citizen media-makers are looking to make a different in tangible ways. Her idea is deputizing a person who has the job to network all of the citizen media in the community. An editor would have the job to figure out what topics need “Big J” journalism for the larger audience. If there’s a pattern in citizen media conversations, it may be worth bringing it to a larger audience.

Ryan Thornburg gave some great perspective about how citizen media is playing a huge role in the political process. Citizen journalists’ impact on politics means more voices in the discourse of a political season. Social networks are offering a more efficient way to deliver those messages. Currently politicians are doing things already that he said newsrooms should take note:
*build an infrastructure for citizen participation
*give volunteers/CJs recognition for the participation
*allow volunteers to easily connect to each other
*have fun
Of course he reminded everyone that this requires “authentic leadership.”

Do you see a consistent trend in these conversations? There is great potential for professional journalists to guide and lead citizen journalists/media creators. I have a lot of hope in these ideals.

Steve Yelvington talked about how most reporters of today are young, underpaid and have no community connections. He feels today’s “broken journalism can be repaired by learning how to participation in unfolding conversations” of citizen media.

You could feel some of the skepticism in the audience. There were concerns over who is liable for libelous blogs. One person considered blogs as a bar conversation. Another wondered how can we ensure blogs remain a supplement to quality journalism.

4) Panel on Innovation in Journalism Education
Tom Fiedler (Boston University/Harvard University)
Wolfgang Donsbach (Technical University, Dresden, Germany)
Nick Lemann (Columbia Graduate School of Journalism)
Peter Shane (Ohio State Law School)

Fielder and Donsbach presented a paper they wrote with recommendations for the future of journalism education. It is still in the vetting process and if we guage the reaction of the audience to the research, there’s more work to be done before it’s published. I’m not going to get into too many details but I’ll mention a couple of things. There was a recommendation to throw out undergraduate journalism programs because it’s too trade-based and not liberal arts enough (Dean Mills of Missouri was pretty quick to counter that). Also, there was a recommendation to “outsource skills.” They thought journalism schools should teach theory and farm out the skills training elsewhere.

There was an unsteady rumble during the many, many PowerPoint pages of thoughts and assumptions. I happened to sit next to UNC’s Dean Jean Folkerts. She gave a very eloquent response to the presentation and the rest of the audience joined in agreement. (I actually asked if she would type out her words - it was written down on paper - and I’m hoping to link to her thoughts when she gets them online) After the room was pretty hot and bothered for about 20 minutes, the conversation continued into drink time and into dinner tine. Long day, lots of thoughts and a TON of emotion.

**Update - Jean Folkerts posted her thoughts from the experience. Take a look.

I’m attending the Carnegie-Knight Conference on the Future of Journalism this week. It’s a collaborative conference between a number of journalism programs (Berkeley, Maryland, Columbia, Austin, Arizona, Nebraska, Carolina, Northwestern, USC, Syracuse and folks where I work: Missouri). The focus: the future. (CORRECTION: Arizona State University is here!)

I’m planning to twitter live during the conference and hopefully blog about conversations on this blog. It would be great to have even more conversations spin off from this event. I’ve been to Boston before - but never Cambridge. I looked at BU and BC, but never Harvard or MIT. I look forward to a new experience and great discussions about our grand industry.

I’m trying something a little different (don’t I always?). The Missouri School of Journalism is about to celebrate its centennial in September and dedicate the new Reynolds Journalism Institute building. There will be thousands of people attending this event. Most of these folks will be members of the journalism school’s alumni. If they’re anything like me, they want to talk. They want to share. They have experience that will benefit one or more people. There will be opportunities for meetings and presentations but there is no way each person will be able to share all of their knowledge.So I thought about creating kiosks that give anyone the chance to post thoughts and lessons about their careers or memories of the journalism school. Leading up to that idea, I set up a YouTube channel to encourage video posts with those thoughts. There has been some promotion through email, but not much and there’s been no video posts added since we set the channel up. It makes me sad and I wonder how the heck I can get people involved. Is it because I’m targeting an age group that just doesn’t do YouTube? Or is it because I’m working with YouTube? The channel concept removes the content away from the “other” content on the site and to me adds legitimacy to the product. But maybe I’m wrong. I’d love to hear thoughts on this one! Heck, even better… Click here and post thoughts for the centennial!

Aggregation. It’s a big focus of my life these days. I’m looking for easy ways to collect information and share it with the general public. At the same time, I’m trying to find ways to collect the websites and social networks I visit and aggregate it into one place. That’s why I’m curious to see how Google’s Friend Connect, Facebook Connect and MySpace’s dataportability may help play in this goal to link everything into one location on the Internet.

I look at this on two levels: How can it work for me and how can it work for my news website.

For me, I love social networking. I love chatting, learning and sharing. It’s kind of obvious from my previous posts. But I think it’s so cool to be able to share and see different perspectives from people I trust. It’s the same idea as having a get together with your friends - but I know I’m not alone when I say many of my friends live across the country. We move around a lot! Not to mention, my job has given me the chance to meet really cool and smart people in all kinds of locations. Social networking lets me stay in touch in ways that writing a letter and sending it in the mail can’t do. And in a slightly self-centered way, it gives me a chance to know what my friends are doing after years of them reading my family blogs and never leaving comments! They know all about me but I don’t know a thing about their most recent updates.

On the professional side of things, I want my news product used by my market! So that’s why I tried an aggregated website sharing the news from KOMU.com, the local NPR newsroom and a local newspaper as a test. We’re aggregating all of our election-themed news and sharing it into the SmartDecision08.com website. This is a way to create a one-stop information hub on the election season in Missouri, specifically mid-Missouri. I don’t have enough funding to make it function as well as I would like it to function, but it is deep. There is so much information and it’s delivered in a way that can really let a news and political information consumer learn a lot. I want to find ways to help collect information and give people the change to socially learn and share on this kind of level. Take news and make it personal. That’s been my goal for years. It’s so cool to see how today’s technology is reaching the concepts I thought about a long time ago.

I am trying out a new site called blippr.com - it gives you a way to socially share the things that entertain you: books, movies, music and games. It’s a level of social networking I haven’t really participated in before. Facebook has all kinds of options that include those items, but blippr seems to have a very clean, concise and non-gimmicky way to accomplish sharing entertainment reviews. It connects to facebook and twitter and friend feed so the idea is to use it as an aggregator of sorts to collect and share your likes and dislikes within the products you already use. I think that’s where everything is headed. I just wish I could wrap my head around how we can use these kinds of tools and still help inform online consumers the news they want and possibly need to know to participate in the non-computer based world where they live. I would have something really cool if I had money and programmers who would put up with my constant brain dumps!

I’m deep inside many different social networking tools. I use them personally in order to see how useful they are for my job. If it’s useful for my day to day life, then there may be a great reason for my newsroom to share its information using those tools. A year ago I got into Twitter, but no one else in my circle got into it so I left. I jumped back in last fall and it’s really picked up steam. Now I’m trying to think of ways these short messages can be helpful for my job and I’ve enjoyed what I can talk about in my life. Fun products like Tweetstats can show off what I talk about the most (like kids, work, meetings, newsroom). I spend a lot of time playing with these tools and thinking big — on a personal and professional level. I blog on Wordpress and Blogger, I tweet on Twitter, I post pictures on Flickr, I create “scrapbooks” on Scrapblog, I co-moderate a Yahoo group, I connect with people on LinkedIn and Facebook. I oversee a news website and an election website. I text, I surf the web from my phone. It’s a hell of a juggle and someday someone is going to find a way to merge all of these products and concepts that offer a connection into one cellphone based tool. I hope I’ll be able to join in and help with the creation of those tools. It wasn’t that long ago when my boss and I were talking about how he would love to see a small handheld video player — Oh you know, like a video iPod? I’m visioning the world’s most interactive iPhone where you can type, talk or post without any effort. That will be super cool. Who knows. Maybe’s Google’s Friend Connect will do that… When it goes live (and it’s rumored to launch today). This could have major implications on how to help a standard website (like komu.com) connect with its audience in a more social way. (The Washington Post explains)

I’ve had Twitter in my view for a while. I joined early last year and decided to drop it when I realized I kept using my own children’s names in the feed. I decided to shut down that username. A few months later I joined back in and I’ve been stunned to watch how my little town in the middle of Missouri is just starting to catch onto Twitter. Not only have individuals joined Twitter, more local media is joining in on the fun as well. You can view my tweets by going to www.twitter.com/jenleereeves. You can view KOMU.com’s tweets by visiting www.twitter.com/komunews. There is a distinct difference between the two twitter accounts. Right now, I tweet about personal and professional things. I also talk to other Twitter members. For KOMU, I tweet with Twitterfeed which is a way to share your RSS feed on Twitter. Twitterfeed turns your URL into a TinyURL so it fits on the 140 character limit. A “follower” simply keeps up to date with the latest top news categorized stories from KOMU.com. I haven’t used it for anything beyond a simplified RSS feed. But I see a TON of potential for Twitter when it comes to delivering news to followers and possibly using the tool for reporters covering news out in the field. The field tweets could be used as direct pieces of information for Twitter followers but it could also be used for gathering up details in the newsroom.

A side tool called Hashtags can collect tweets that have a theme. If there’s a fire in Fulton, Hashtags would aggregate all tweets that contain the word #fultonfire. This would give the newsroom a simple way to keep up with the reporters who are out on the breaking news story. Heck, I wonder if we could use it to follow the reporters covering daily events. I haven’t tried it but I bet it would be an awesome way to keep an eye on the reporters without them feeling micromanaged.

I just realized I have babbled on and on about Twitter and I haven’t even explained it. Twitter is a site that collects your thoughts, status or links. It’s kind of like your Facebook status, but you can update it easily: from your computer (on the twitter ste, via IM or widget tools) or your cellphone. Actually, I update my Twitter and my Facebook profile at the same time. The twist: You must tweet within 140 characters. It’s a concise description of your life and thoughts. I love it. And apparently more and more people are loving it since a journalism student was rescued from jail in Egypt.

Then an extra interesting thing happened. Today, one of my local newspapers decided to follow my Twitter stream. I think that’s interesting. It’s a way to promote the fact that they have the Twitter stream, but it also affiliates the paper to every person who is followed. I purposefully chose not to follow people on Twitter because I didn’t want to appear to pander to the Twitter community. That makes me wonder. Did I make the right choice? Once I knew the local paper had a Twitter stream, I decided to follow them because I’m just curious what they’re up to. But I’d love to hear from those of you out in the interweb? What is the polite or appropriate way to “pimp your site” on Twitter? Is there a right way?

I love this stuff.

…be an automatic system that can take my blog thoughts out of my brain and post them for me so I can get all the other work done!

I spent most of the past week taking part in the RTNDA and NAB conferences. It is always interesting to see where people think the journalism and broadcasting industry is going. There was a lot of talk about how the traditional journalist is his or her way out. Obviously I believe that - I struggle to try and incorporate my thoughts on information gathering to as many beginning journalists in our program. I really think a person who has the main goal of presenting something online with a side skill of presenting information on a more traditional media outlet has many, many opportunities. Three years ago, I had news directors begging for good newscast producers. This year I had news directors begging for good newscast producers AND also good website editors and multi-media creators. Last year I was depressed to see most of my amazing web-based students take traditional jobs because no one knew what to do with them. This year there are jobs and there are newsrooms that understand the kind of potential I am helping create.

It’s a very good feeling.

 The best moment was when I found out one of the students I had last year who couldn’t get hired is suddenly working on the web for one  of the best newsrooms in the country. The broadcast industry is catching on! Hooray!