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Kindred stress the needs for gamers

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!, Oct 1, 2009.

  1. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    23 years ago, our deadlines were 12:30, 1:10, 1:40 and 2:15. People were not waiting for their paper.

    Today, we have straight-to-negative pagination (no more camera needed to shoot negatives of pages to make plates from) --- thereby saving several minutes per page --- and our deadlines are 11:00 and 12:00. With 11 being the "our county" deadline. County to the north gets the later deadline.

    That's a difference of 2 hours and 15 minutes. 3 hours and 15 minutes for my county's readers.

    Three hours and 15 minutes.

    Why?

    "People are getting up earlier." "People are commuting longer distances to work and have to leave the house earlier."

    Those are the reasons I always hear.

    And none of them are even close to accounting for a difference of 2 hours and 15 minutes, let alone 3:15.

    Unless you're one of those idiots who works in the Bay Area (but cannot afford to live there) who commutes 2-3 hours to work every day.
     
  2. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    This is inarguable among those with complete control of their mental faculties.

    At the same time, the Sports Journalism Institute is indeed a think tank. Or at least, I hope it is. Because in 2009, we need an endeavor like this to be about more than teaching the next generation about how to interview, write, shoot and edit. We need it to be about more than just a great escape hatch for a group of longtime print people (or, for those who prefer, a place "for them to give back!") as newspapers experience dire times.

    Sports journalism itself needs these people to spend much of their time in this safe(r) Ivory Tower not just teaching students, but also performing significant research regarding the financial future and economic viability of sports journalism as a place where at least some people can continue to draw a steady paycheck.

    With the money behind it, with APSE as a partner, and yes, with the fact that Indiana has a very good business school to work with for such studies, this has great potential to be a "think tank" that puts forth ideas that benefit the entire industry.

    If all it becomes is a place that teaches students individual skills and has the odd column or discussion seminar bemoaning a lack of diversity, discussing quality leads or speaking of the possible benefits/pitfalls of Blogs/Twitter/etc., then it is an opportunity wasted.
     
  3. Dave Kindred

    Dave Kindred Member

    Like all of us who have lost jobs in this business, Piotr wants the answer that no one has. Finishing up my book on The Washington Post, I did an interview the other day with the new executive editor there, Marcus Brauchli. That newspaper lost over $150 million in the last 18 months; in four rounds of buyouts over the last six years, it has said good-bye to over 400 newsrooomers. Do you think The Post is concerned about its "financial future" and "economic viability"? Damn right. And the best minds at that 130-year-old newspaper -- part of a multi-billion dollar corporation -- can't figure out what to do about it. "There is no silver bullet," Brauchli said. All The Post knows, and all the industry knows about its $150 Billion-with-a-B problem, is that Something Must Be Done, only nobody knows what. "We just have to keep doing the journalism that has marked The Washington Post forever," Brauchli said.

    That said, The Post has changed It has changed ways and means of reporting and delivery to adapt to the times. It has made the mechanical changes necessary to deal with the technological revolution in communication. For the first time, The Post has reorganized its newsroom, physically and journalistically, to handle both print and online. Still, not a soul in that newsroom has so much as a hint of an answer to the organization's "financial future" and "economic viability" other than to produce the best journalism best fitting the times they live in. Finding a way to a future that's good financially is the business side's job now, as, indeed, it has always been, even in the flush days when no sportswriter knew or cared how the money was made. We just did our jobs, cashed the checks, and occasionally laughed with wonder when realizing we were paid to do what most people paid to do.

    No think tank is going to change newspapers' economic problems. Those problems are here to stay because the world has changed around us. What won't change is that people want information. Information has value, and capitalists will find a way to make money on it. And then, I believe, the people who best find and deliver that information will be the people who find and keep jobs the longest. Yes, once again I have come back to the idea that the hungriest, most talented, and hardest working people will find a way to make a living in sports journalism.

    I did not "escape" to the National Sports Journalism Center. I asked to do that column. (They pay me enough to take my wife to the movies twice a week, but not enough for two of those big popcorn things.) I like to talk about what we do, especially to people who want to hear it. Davis Love once told me that Tom Kite would talk to the groundskeeper for two hours if he thought he could get one minute's worth of information that made him a better player. That's the way I feel about that column. I'm the groundskeeper. If someone who wants to talk for two hours in hopes of finding one sentence that helps them do the job better, I'm available. I'm happy to do it. Yes, I'm happy to "give back" because, God knows, along the way a lot of people have given to me.
     
  4. WriteThinking

    WriteThinking Well-Known Member

    This is an excellent post, Dave, and we certainly all can relate to and be interested in it, and in what you have to say.

    The vast majority of us here are, as you say, kindred (Kindred? :D ) spirits who like to talk shop, and, who, at one time or another, or many times, have had and expressed the same sentiments. And we understand the need for, and the urgency behind, any efforts to change/save the business.

    The line, "We just have to keep doing the journalism that has marked The Washington Post forever," by Marcus Brauchli would seem to be the money line, in both your book, and your post.

    But, unfortunately, really isn't, for exactly the reasons to which you allude.

    Changes in time demands, technology, the seemingly waning audience ability and efforts to be educated and engaged, not to mention the short attention span and surface-depth-only interest of said audience that is reflected in the prevailing chit-chat, one-line tweeting/IM sound-bite style that constitutes a "discussion" these days do nothing to advance solid, society-supporting journalism.

    People seemingly don't necessarily want information...or, at least, not any that they don't, um, want (either to hear, or deal with).

    None of this, nor any of the cutbacks in media staffing going on lately, is conducive to real, good journalism. And yet, the industry is going, head-long, and deeper and deeper, into these transitions in only the most reactive ways, when what we need are truly responsive or revolutionary ones that might place or keep the media in the position of leadership of a culture/country/society that it has previously held.

    This is all part and parcel of why your thought that "Yes, once again I have come back to the idea that the hungriest, most talented, and hardest working people will find a way to make a living in sports journalism" is off the mark.

    The problem has little to do with journalists' desire to do good journalism. Although journalists' ability to do that certainly has been compromised, the real issue is the pesky capitalism/advertising part of the equation.
     
  5. Clerk Typist

    Clerk Typist Guest

    Two splendid posts in succession here. Thanks to both Dave and "Write."
    BTExpress, the reason that Saturday night deadline is so insanely early is because the pre-printed sections have to be stuffed into the live sections (from two to four, depending on the paper) being run on Saturday night. That takes a great deal of time, bwcause it's usually a two-stage process. The standard-sized sections are stuffed, then the roto sections) ad flyers and, if you're lucky, the Sunday mag and the TV book) come next. Plus, in rare cases these days, there may be a larger outlying readership for the Sunday paper. That means longer or additional truck runs and that means earlier deadlines.
    Conversely, the Saturday paper is usually the least-read of the week (few commuter sales), and can take a later deadline.
     
  6. Dave Kindred

    Dave Kindred Member

    Write

    Thanks. Well said. We'll agree to disagree, not on all things but some important ones.

    Fact is, the recurring theme in my book about The Post is its recognition of the need to change with the times. That's why Brauchli was hired -- to merge the print and online operations, to do world-class journalism while making The Post a player in today's ADD, news-alert, mobile, 140-character, Facebook/Twitter/a-novel-in-6-words world. American Journalism Review did a piece a few years back under the headline, "Adapt or Die." That's what the major metros are facing. That's why Brauchli, at 46, was hired to replace a 66-yr-old executive editor. Change was Brauchli's energy, not his enemy.

    I hope, by the way, that my posts haven't given the impression that I believe journalism is only high-concept, long-form, win-a-Pulitzer narrative or deep-think policy deconstruction. To me, journalism is everything in the daily journal, the newspaper, and now on news websites. This morning's newspapers/websites sports coverage included more breaking-news journalism than the White House press corps produced in a week. Every MLB beat reporter has more journalistic obligation in a week than a statehouse reporter in Austin does in a month.

    Journalism ain't dead (no matter what the banner ad across the bottom of these pages says; maybe the words are used ironically, I've not clicked on it as a matter of principle :) ). Maybe the news will take a different shape, be delivered in different ways, but news has been around since men drew pictures on cave walls and it will be alive when we're living in caves again. I agree that the economics of the business are bad. If you're looking for your B.A. to assure you a living, newspapers are not the way go. But then, that has always been so. In my childhood, the change was the outrageous (to old-timers) move to the use of fiction's techiques in news reporting so brashly called the New Journalism. Now, the change is to Something Else, Only Nobody Knows What. It's scary -- and that's the fun of it. Adapt or die. I don't need Red Smith's 800 words, though I've used the template for a long time; I ccould write a column in 140 words every day, and it'd be fun, and it'd get read, and it'd be journalism. (Lincoln needed only 272 words at Gettysburg.)

    Adapt or die. What we have in our business now is what capitalism has always had, survival of the fittest. We're living the Darwinian theory, the newspaper edition.
     
  7. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    What banner ad? ;)
     
  8. GlenQuagmire

    GlenQuagmire Active Member

    Pointing out that some of these suggestions are impossible under certain circumstances is not whining. It's called living in reality.

    Interview 10 sources post-game? Try getting 45 minutes after the game ends to do interviews and file a gamer, notebook and sidebar or get left behind since you have to travel with the team. (Let's just say life is better for home games.)

    That's a sucky reality, but I make the most of it. I do agree it doesn't hurt to look at what you might be able to improve.
     
  9. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    I prefer to say we're today's steel mills. Where once there were 100 jobs, now there are 25. And the number is ever dwindling. If and when the economy recovers, the lost jobs aren't coming back.

    Many of the "fittest" will have to seek gigs that have nothing to do with journalism. There will be more talented people lost to journalism, with many rejecting it because they cannot find a living wage.

    I never thought you "escaped" to the Sports Journalism Institute. Thought you were just writing a regular column for them, possibly on a freelance basis. Maybe on some advisory board . . . But some of their leadership? Escapees, who wisely got while the getting is good.

    As you said, no one has the answers. But while newspapers are busy putting out today's paper and trying to save themselves, and TV stations are occupied with the next newscast, journalism organizations and journalism schools have no such comparable daily pressures or responsibilities to shareholders.

    I don't know if this Sports Journalism Institute can find all - or any of - the answers. But it should be part of their mandate to try.
     
  10. apseloser

    apseloser Member

    The "10 sources" thing that has everyone so worked up was one of just 5 tips Dave Kindred offered and it clearly states that it happened awhile ago and may be unreasonable.

    The other points are not. I thought they were helpful -- so much so that I shared them with the staff here.

    So typical for so many on this board to blow one small point out of proportion. And then make one excuse after another why they can't do it.

    Clearly, what many of us are doing is NOT working. So don't be so reluctant to try something new. If a pro's pro like Kindred gave me a suggestion on how to write a better lede or feature or gamer, I'd be all ears.

    After all, he's an APSE winner and I'm just an APSE loser, 10-plus years running.
     
  11. Dave Kindred

    Dave Kindred Member

    The tips were Jeff D'Alessio's....
     
  12. Moderator1

    Moderator1 Moderator Staff Member

    Well, Jeff is a pretty good source, too.


    I covered a game Saturday. Did a bunch of interviews afterward. Got upstairs and counted. NINE! I was ticked at myself.
    Ten is a good target.
     
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