'Students ... should just assume their future is online'

Pretty good interview here with some online journalism expert, including the suggestion that every student coming out of j-school should try to blog for a month just to get the feel of what it takes:

http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2007/01/15/icm-interview-howard-owens/

 

I was told to learn HTML, digital video editing, etc., if I wanted to have a career beyond being a entry-level writer. Why? Because eventually newspapers will have desk editors post stories online as soon as they're ready to go.

That was years ago and now I'm seeing it in my shop. Makes sense.

 

I'm not so sure everyone needs to run out and take an HTML course. While basic HTML knowledge is a plus, most of these Web publishing systems are ridiculously easy to use.

I think it's more of a frame of mind focus. Students should have a blog (about something tangible) and work on writing a web update NOW rather than waiting for all of your sources to get back to you.

I graduated college less than 5 years ago and was taught absolutely nothing about the Web. Granted, none of my professors knew anything about the Web to begin with, but still... we had one teacher that made us turn in articles like she had to at a paper back in the 1960s: double-spaced with our last name and page number in the upper-right hand corner of each page. If we didn't do that, it was an automatic grade bump-down. There was another design class that spent a month teaching us headline counts, which I have never, ever used.

 

On Jan. 1, Bob Baker's Newsthinking had a post containing an NYT and Washington Post story about the future of newspapers. I hadn't seen the second, about the Fort Myers, Fla., paper's aggressive online and local reporting initiative, until now. Very interesting:

http://www.newsthinking.com/story.cfm?SID=249

 

Added: You won't find a more updated, locally oriented web homepage than the Fort Myers News-Press. They've got a number of stories from this morning, and one of their home page links is today's high school sports schedule. Very interesting stuff:

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage

 

I agree about the HTML now. But back then, there were few affordable database/upload software bundles. My first newspaper job was part-time "assistant online editor" one summer, posting stories to a HTML document and uploading them via FTP. However, the J-department was running its Web site via database software.

Then again, universities can blow lots of money on the newest stuff before newspapers would even be willing.

Now, they get these blasted computers to do their dirty work. </Superman III>

 

Unsolicited compliment: Bob Baker is one of the best writers and forward-thinkers I've met in 17 years of putting out the "Daily Miracle."

 

Everything old is new again. Before radio, newspapers, be they am or pm, had an infinite number of editions, and writers/reporters/editors just slammed in what they had by deadline and kept adding and/or subtracting as they went along.
The primary function of the web is to take newsgathering/distribution back to where it was before suburbanization and home delivery imposed fewer, earlier, more rigid deadlines to the print version.

 

I don't check his website even close to enough. I happened upon this by accident today.

 

That happens in TV, and it's hilarious. The community college across the street has the latest digital Avid editing package, and we're still editing tape-to-tape. I covered a game awhile back, and I saw this nifty satellite truck parked outside I'd never seen before-- and it was too small to be the telecast truck.

When I asked around, I found out it was the local university's truck. We took a tour of it, and my photog and I were laughing our asses off because we didn't even have a truck there - our station couldn't spare one.
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Very interesting article, SF. Thanks for posting. I was particularly interested in the "crowdsourcing" idea.

We have the same multi-tasking movement going on in TV - trying to get reporters to shoot video, create podcasts, blog, etc. I used to one-man-band, and it works for some things. For example, Friday night high school football. We were able to get highlights of tons of games with reporters shooting ....

But features tended to suck when done that way. And I suspect newspaper reporting will suffer if the one-person-band has to concentrate on shooting stills, video, uploading, etc.

 

Does that mean I'll have to stop snickering at the podunk TV guys who shout their questions from behind the camera in locker rooms?

 

You just might be one of them; remember the experiment in Nashville, where reporters, site producers, and camera people have all been given a laptop and a digital camera? You get three times the number of stories.

I'm starting vodcasting later this year. Should be fun, although the camera adds 30 pounds. I'll have to do a Don Tollefson and get rid of the jowls.