I keeping thinking back to Kent Fischer who was at the peak of beat blogging for the Dallas Morning News‘ Dallas ISD Blog – the paper’s beat blog on the city’s public school district. Last year he announced he was leaving because he didn’t feel the newspaper industry was stable enough for his comfort. The site beatblogging.org quoted him saying:

“But the news business no longer provides stability or financial security. If I was young and single and didn’t have two kids under 3 and no mortgage … I’d probably stick around to see how this all ends. But I got all those things and more. So, I’m out…”

Often I talk to people in this industry and we talk about our dreams. It often revolves around the idea that we would work in an untraditional environment where we can try and fail or succeed until we find a way to do good work while making enough money for those shelter, clothing and food needs. But if I was offered a chance to experiment with a new career in an unsure economic environment, I’d probably say no. I have a job that lets me play with technology a bit while working in a traditional news environment AND I can make enough consistent money to pay for most of our core needs. Jumping away from that is scary.

So who gets to play with experimental news environments? Who gets to come up with the greatest and newest ideas and put them into fruition?

It’s those people Kent Fischer talks about who aren’t tied down to responsibilities.

I’ve had a chance to talk to a lot of these people. Most often they are men in their mid to late 20′s who were able to get enough of an investment to launch a small (or big) idea while being able to at least survive with shelter, clothing and some food. Most of these guys are skinny mind you. Either way. They have my dream. They’re brave enough to jump outside the norm and try their hardest to make something work for this industry that we love.

I guess I’m not brave. I can talk a great talk and I’ve tried to take a lot of my ideas into my traditional environment. But if I really walked the walk, wouldn’t I jump and try something new?

I’m not sure.

I know I have the itch to expand into unknown directions. The more I think and try to change my traditional setting, I know more “new” settings need to be created before we all know what is really going to happen to journalism. But I also know my kids need their piano, swimming, baseball, dance, soccer, football… Whatever. And that may keep me away from any of the real industry changes.

Is this fair? Are there solutions? Who can step forward and help big thinkers like me who want to take action, make a difference and make sure I have healthcare for my family? If someone knows, sign me up.

UPDATE: I have heard from a number of current soon-to-graduate students who take this blog as a negative and scary outlook as they head into their career. Please don’t think of it this way. Back when I graduated innovation was me trying to bring a TV newsroom to work with a local newspaper. Now innovation is beyond my wildest imagination. Your imagination is open to do anything and everything. Take this time right out of school to make a change, save the art of journalism in this changing world. Be strong, be brave and have fun.

That’s why I tried to launch a Foursquare Day in Columbia last week. It was worth the try to create a “swarm” and get 50 people to gather in one place. It didn’t work – but it was fun to have an excuse to visit spots in my town where I don’t normally hang out. Plus, I had an excuse to bring a bouncy ball and chalk downtown and start a game of foursquare. Silly? Yes. Fun? Certainly. And I hope it shows I really do want to find fun ways to bring the social media community together.

But I’m not sure if my town is comfortable with instant gatherings. We live such a scheduled and busy life juggling work and life (and our kids’ lives). But I’d love to find ways to create social meetings that are fun and I could offer skills and knowledge that I teach daily with my students and employees in my newsroom. The knowledge we have translates on so many professional and personal levels and I want my community to know more. The end result is a bit self-centered. A more savvy community will participate in sharing with the journalists in our community. It would help our changing newsrooms transition into using a more socially-minded and sharing news process. Is that greedy? Or am I just trying to move our town a little closer into a vision of community I expect will happen naturally just in a longer time frame? These are the thoughts that ramble through my head at times.

(Photo courtesy of @justex07)

Not long ago, I posted a blog asking the question, “Who is going to lead the future of journalism?” After I posted it and shared the link on Twitter, I was asked to lead an online chat about this topic tomorrow at 1pm Eastern Time on Poynter’s website.

I’d love a range of people to participate — a few people responded to my blog post, others left messages on my facebook page, some send me thoughts over Twitter. This may be a great spot to bring all of those thoughts together in one place. So please feel free to join in tomorrow, May 14 at 1pm ET.

So the Missouri School of Journalism is spending a lot of time talking about how we can be more agile. Should it be focused on a change in curriculum? Should it be a change in focus for the faculty? Should we move forward with more partnerships with the journalism industry? Should the journalism school work on more interdisciplinary partnerships?

So I’m trying to take some time to envision the future and what kind of faculty structure would change the way we teach. What would you do if you had a blank slate and the chance to teach journalism?

What I also found from all of these talks and discussions is how everyone would love to have a picture of what the future looks like. I wish I had that answer. But I’ll give you a few ideas.

Forget everything you know now and watch it become more organic. The information you want will be at your fingertips online or on your cell phone (or whatever the future of a phone looks like). You get to choose how you get all information. Video on demand, feeds of information, photos, conversations. You pick when you want it and you learn about new developments on your own terms. I envision journalists to be the people who help you take all of those pieces of information and get more context behind them. If you are interested in a new business in town, you’ll hear and read what other people you trust are saying and you’ll go to the journalism source to give you the history of the building, the owners, the food and the restaurant’s safety history (if its been around long enough). We’ve all had to make a conscious choice to be informed or uninformed – It will be so much easier to be informed. But it will also be much easier to be informed on your own terms. You’ll have to reach out to make more sense of it all. You’ll have to make a choice to confirm the information you gather.

I talked to a reporter at the Baltimore Sun about how the Baltimore Police are using Twitter to announce shootings and other illegal activity in the city. The reporter told me how she wondered if people who read that Twitter feed will think they’re fully informed about the city’s activities. I told her that at first people will think they’re informed. (It’s novel! It’s transparent!) But after a while, they’ll want more. Hopefully they’ll look to the local newsrooms to help provide more background from those 140 character alerts. The trick: The newsrooms need to be paying attention to where people are gathering their own personal information. The newsrooms need to take those sources and provide a deeper understanding to they continue to be an important part of informing the public. That’s always been the goal of journalism – And I truly believe that will never go away.

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 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.