Five minutes.

I wish I could really summarize this experience in five minutes. But since I have five minutes, I’m going to focus on how I grew and changed my goals. I first focused on how newsrooms can collaborate. It’s still important… But I learned during this time that even if I find the most amazing way to bring multiple newsrooms together with the help of technology, it isn’t worth the effort if people don’t use the information. That’s why I moved to the most important word for my life as a journalist and as a journalism professor:

Community.

We need to find ways to teach our journalism students and our industry how to respect the process and work it takes to build community. This is crucial as more people turn to journalists for their personal skills and abilities – it’s very possible they aren’t going to them because of their newsroom. We need to be open, honest and connected. Hopefully I can search for ways to share this knowledge so we can all use the great skills of the journalism profession in this new socially connected world.

The simple fact: I have too many jobs. As a professor, newsroom manager, fellow, grad school advisor, technology and policy committee member, technology faculty council member… mom, wife, dog owner, home owner… I could go on and on and on. To build a community I would need to shuffle priorities and lighten my load.

This is a big reason why Smart Decision ’08 didn’t take off as a community. It’s why I’m not pushing too hard to publicize my current economy project. I had initially thought a collaboration of traditional media content that is aggregated into a single site would bring enough viewers to develop a community. After working with Jane Stevens and watching her project grow, it makes more sense to develop the community and supplement it with traditional media aggregation. Jane is working on creating a structure of web-based health communities that focus on specific topics. She’s also helped launch a journalism web community called the RJI Collaboratory. These communities need time, attention and commitment.

While I have tried to develop my Money Commons site, I have also taken all of my lessons learned to KOMU. I have changed the way we use Twitter. We have launched a social networking community. We’re trying to find better and more effective ways to use our Facebook page. I have had a chance to share what I’ve learned about social networking to media outlets and many more faculty and students than I evercould have talked to if I was working exclusively out at the television station. I’m so darn lucky for this opportunity. I hope to have better ideas on the steps to take towards expanding my Money Commons community. My time with RJI is coming to a close, but I’m going to continue to look to a future of helping the Missouri School of Journalism prepare for an unknown but exciting future.

It’s so interesting to be around so many people who understand technology… A conversation I’ve heard a lot is how these web and interactive-based ideas we are talking about are often not supported by higher management. It’s the case in industries across the board. It’s not just a problem for journalism. But watching another newspaper fall today (the Seattle Post-Intelligencer) is more reason for me to feel the need to dump my ideas on how to change the way we teach journalism students of today. The P-I is doing things a little differently than the Rocky Mountain News closure. In Seattle’s case the “paper” will live on in a web-format only. That means many traditional journalists will have to turn their thought process completely around and put web as the priority. Sure, many newsrooms are starting to put that priority out there. This is the first time in a long time where the change in priority is about to be come the only priority. Journalists need to think web first.

So how do these long-standing journalism schools do it?

I have an idea that I’ve been working with for a while and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

For years journalism students have been taught how to get dropped into a story (it can be breaking news, developing news or just feature stories) and be able to become “instant experts.” A general assignment reporter for a broadcast station is sent from story to story with no over arching purpose beyond covering the community or city. A general assignment reporter for most newsrooms follows a large beat on a city or education or entertainment (you get the drift)… But no one is specifically focused on one topic and tasked with building a community and understanding the existing community surrounding that topic.

Jane Stevens is working on fixing that challenge as part of the Reynolds Journalism Institute. She’s working on creating a web structure that will help journalists do good journalism even if they don’t have a traditional newsroom to back them up. It would basically be an out-of-the-box tool for community building and focused research and journalistic work. She’s leading a project to create what she calls a “health shell.” It’s a web structure were individual journalists can collect data about various aspects of the health issue and collaborate online with a website where you can share a community of people who care about that topic. It’s exciting to watch some of my students get to really know an element of health that they find important. Some current topics are fitness, senior health literacy and mental health. The student journalists are learning what it takes to gather sources and get a solid understanding of a niche. But here’s the trick: when the student wrap up this semester, some are going to graduate, others are going to run off for the summer. How can we keep this project sustainable within this higher education environment?

That got me thinking about journalism school curriculum.

Here’s my idea. I kind of base it off of how we make the radio-television sequence work. In the first semester you learn the foundation of skills. In the second semester you refine those skills and get good enough to work in the newsroom. In the third semester you are a regular reporter each week. For a community-based website, you could do something similar. In the first semester you learn the foundation of skills it takes to be a multi-media journalist and how to gather data and collect information. In the second semester you are an assistant to the lead community journalists for a specific niche website. In the third semester you are a leader of the community. It requires something different. Instead of becoming a general assignment reporter, you learn how to be a niche reporter. You learn what it takes to grow a connection with your community and get to know it well enough to be a legitimate presence online. The challenge: students would have to pick a niche during the first semester and stick with it. If they hate the niche by the end of a year and a half, then at least they know what it takes to gather up enough sources to really get a niche website rolling. Then they know what it takes to find another niche and get a job doing it elsewhere. That research and community building can be taken into so many directions after graduation. I think it would be amazing. Plus, the niche websites at the Missouri School of Journalism would continue to rock.

Ahhh. It feels better to let that out.

I have attended all kinds of sessions and I’ll try to write about some here and there as I go but I really felt like I needed to get this one out there as soon as possible!

With my project, I’m starting to collect content from the partner newsrooms, KBIA, KOMU and the Columbia Missourian. I’m hoping to partner with other newsrooms in the area as we try to document and assist the mid-Missouri area during this recession. I’m hoping to add site-based content as well: a database of contacts who can help people in economic crisis, original content that is based on a web-first presentation and hopefully a number of easy ways for people to communicate with each other on the site. I’m currently playing around with Google’s Friend Connect tools. It’s a VERY young site and it doesn’t have everything it needs at this point. But it’s starting to roll. I’d love some thoughts on how to take this site and make it into an online hub of information. My goal is to help the community and help newsrooms collaborate. It has a better feeling than what happens when you visit Smart Decision ’08. But both projects have the same goal: bring multiple newsrooms together to better inform and collaborate with the community. That’s why I keep doing everything I’m doing. I want to help journalists remain relevant while helping my community. It’s a great feeling. I’m planning to talk to a group of students (and anyone else who wants to watch) during a Society of Professional Journalists presentation tonight. I hope to talk about this project and brain storm with the crowd about what could really happen on this little space on the web.

I found this note sent out to the Mizzou Mafia Yahoo Group from Hannah Jackson who works at RJI:

If you are on the list that received emails today from the Reynolds Journalism Institute….

We sincerely apologize for the email dilemma that occurred today (January 23). We have fixed the problem now. It was the result of a code error and was not a virus. Any reply emails including automatic replies resulted in a “reply all” to the entire listserv. Sorry for the inconvenience this caused you. We hope that people won’t hit “reply” or “reply all” to the original emails, because this may prolong the problem. If you would like to contact us, please email us directly at rjionline@missouri.edu.

Because the research and activities of RJI are important to journalism and our nation’s democracy, we look forward to sharing news of our progress. Again, we apologize for this unfortunate problem.

Sincerely,

Pam Johnson
Executive Director
Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute
www.rjionline.org

Contact Carole Christie with any questions at 573.882.8251 or rjionline@missouri.edu

My only hope is this means the company will not have to make a more drastic change like laying even more workers off. 

I’ve searched the best I can and here are some of the discussions about this announcement:

New York Times article
Reuters (on Yahoo News)
Politico
Unofficial Gannett Blog
E&P Pub
Editor & Publisher
Des Moines Register

This comes while the Reynolds Journalism Institute plans to hold a one day talkfest about getting journalists back on the street. There will be a good crowd participating here in Columbia, MO while another 100 people plan to take part in an Adobe Connect room. We hope to spend the day brainstorming on how we can build a journalism incubator here at RJI (The RJI Collaboratory) and find ways to help journalists remain journalists. (That means being able to cover news AND eat food with a roof over his or her head).

UPDATE: After talking to one of my former students who is an on-air reporter, his/her station was told anyone with service contracts (mainly broadcast reporters and producers) are exempt from the furlough. Photographers and other newsroom positions will be required to take part in the furlough. There is already a growing tension between reporters and photographers.

A former Gannett employee now blogs about the company and is posting as much as he can gather. Here is his link to the FAQ Gannett gave to employees.

But that isn’t enough. I learned a lot in our previous Smart Decision 08 project. I don’t want to lose momentum… So I’m working on creating a way to bubble up great journalism in the thick of the failing economy. I’d like to launch a collaborative effort based on the economy and try to become a central hub of information and collaboration in a time of uncertainty and need. Here are my initial thoughts that have come through many meetings and late noodling before I fall asleep at night:

1) This site needs to launch soon – I’m thinking about building a blog system (possibly WordPress?) at first and then consider building something more extensive in Drupal as our needs grow.
2) I’d like to launch it by asking as many people in the mid-Missouri area to tell us (the journalists) what is important to them. I want them to lead us towards the stories we need to tell.
3) This could be a great opportunity to team up with some of the journalism students who are in the earlier classes. They could help gather simple evergreen information that can help make the site really helpful for our community
4) I need to play with my own server space until the university is willing to open up a server space outside of our firewall that allows us to play with open source platforms. I’ve said this for at least two years. I haven’t won this battle yet.

While I try to noodle on these ideas, I’m packing for a big family trip to Florida so I can see my parents and enjoy the beach. I realize I never brain dump enough on this blog and it will be my resolution next year to share my thoughts more often and openly as I try to make the most out of my fellowship time.

At the same time, I hope I can use my university knowledge to help guide my fellow fellows Jane Stevens and Matt Thompson’s projects into the future beyond their fellowship. It would be wonderful to take advantage of their hard work and help find ways to institutionalize their ideas into the workflow of our newsrooms. It’s going to be an amazing four months. At the same time I hope to continue to work with my other fellow fellows (Bill Densmore and Mike Fancher) and faculty fellow (Margaret Duffy) to take full advantage of all of our amazing projects!

I consider this an awesome opportunity to take my Smart Decision ’08 tool as a way to engage a regional audience. I hope to have more time and resources to push this project into a high place than I could have done if I had continued working on the project in my spare time. At the same time, I get to hang out with a really great group of people who are my “fellow fellows.”

In the aftermath of the Missouri School of Journalism’s centennial celebration, I’m happy to say I had a pretty successful experiment during the event. I had 114 freshmen, gave them access to WordPress, told them to attend sessions and asked them to blog about the various events. Some of the students were given the task to take Flip cameras and talk to journalism school alumni and collect answers about their careers and lessons learned during those careers. It’s all gathering into a pretty great channel on YouTube. We also had a backchannnel on what was going on during the event on Twitter. All in all, it was a lot of fun. Exausting but fun.