Somebody, plz, tell me what the f she means.....

[Dave Kindred]

Not to be dinosauric about this. But I sincerely want someone to explain to me what Meagan Carberry means here. She's a former newsprint person now working in multi-media. She wrote these grafs in a column published in the most recent Editor & Publisher.
She believes, rightly so in my opinion, that newspapers can never reach the so-desired "young reader" as long as they insist on geezers, dinosaurs, and lesser old farts deciding how to do that wonderful thing. She believes young people should make those decisions, and I do not argue that logic. But for the life of me, I do not understand her argument on how to do it.

(The parenthetical wiseasseries embedded are mine. Still, I truly want to understand what she would have us do.) Here goes....
*******


We're not courting young readers. We're building a new approach to journalism and the dissemination of information in our global society. It's not a committee or a font or an A1 story about "American Idol." It's a shift in the way we view ourselves and the news business initiated by leaders who instill the attitude as a virtue among their team members. It's blowing up that thing you hold in your hands and trying something drastically different with a sense of urgency. (And THIS next sentence makes my teeth hurt)....
It's the building of multi-media communities where social networking tools will bring us away from the speculation of editors at desks reading wire stories and closer to a model where users organically define what is newsworthy (now my hair hurts) and technology will deliver it in the packaging that makes sense. (Such as....microchips on the inside of one's eyelids?)

The transition will be forged by everyone from editors-in-chief to 22-year-old copy desk interns, but the task before us will be the same as it always has been: to deliver fair and accurate accounts of the relevant news and analysis of our time. And maybe let those precocious little millennial twerps show you how Twitter works. (Even as they drop cyanide tablets into the dinosaur pond.)

 

[Ace]

We need to change the way we communicate with readers, though we're not exactly sure how that is but it should be fancy and bright and new.

 

[EE94]

We need to change the way we communicate with readers, though we're not exactly sure how that is but it should be fancy and bright and new.

and go "ping"

 

[pseudo]

Instead of editors at desks deciding what stories might actually be relevant to their consumers, put links to every story on the youngsters' MySpace pages and let them decide which ones they think are newsworthy.

Logical result of doing this: CNN renames itself the Britney News Network, and FoxNews pre-empts its election coverage for car chases in L.A.

Oh, wait -- FNC already does that. Never mind...

 

[JayFarrar]

It's the building of multi-media communities where social networking tools will bring us away from the speculation of editors at desks reading wire stories and closer to a model where users organically define what is newsworthy and technology will deliver it in the packaging that makes sense.

She essentially believes that group think is smarter than one individual sitting at a desk. And that group will collectively decide what gets in the paper and then you'll read it on your iPod or whatever gadget is handy.
It also means that she doesn't believe in the efforts of professional journalists trained to decide what is newsworthy and how it is displayed.
Much better for the myspace masses to decide what is important rather than the person who is boots on the ground and first-hand observing what is going on.
It is comparable to going to a message board forum to figure out what's wrong with rather than consulting a doctor. Stupid doctor, the forum participants will have been through it before and therefore know more than the doctor trained and educated in the field.
Of course that is also happening. But the forum people can get sued for malpractice if they give bad advice and someone dies.
Not their fault.

 

[PeteyPirate]

Meagan_Web2.0

 

[OnTheRiver]

Dave:

Have you seen the IBM commercial where they play "Buzzword Bingo" at the corporate strategic planning speech? Well, you just ingested a written version.

Good news, though. If your card boasted the following:

global society
multi-media communities
social networking
Twitter (which sucks)
organically
packaging

You win!

 

[21]

My brain shuts off any time I see 'organically' used describe something other than vegetation. Like the dopes who go to lunch and leave five minute messages on their voice mails about how they're 'exploring off-site rejuvenational opportunities.'

Social networking tools.....like Facebook? Maybe the writers can Friendship Request the kids, and ask what they want to read today, and then AIM them when the story is done?

I just like that kindred said f.

 

[jgmacg]

I just like that kindred said f.

David swears like that because he's still thinking inside the box.

 

[sportschick]

I just like that kindred said f.

David swears like that because he's still thinking inside the box.

I like that he used plz. It made me giggle.

 

[jgmacg]

It's very polite inside the box.

 

[21]

We need mrscottnewman to sort this out. Somehow, he is responsible for this.

 

[dixiehack]

Dave:

Have you seen the IBM commercial where they play "Buzzword Bingo" at the corporate strategic planning speech? Well, you just ingested a written version.

Good news, though. If your card boasted the following:

global society
multi-media communities
social networking
Twitter (which sucks)
organically
packaging

You win!

I was thinking of the one where everybody is lying on the floor in a darkened room trying to change the company. When the boss asks how they'll do it, that same girl (uber cute, btw) replies "We haven't ideated that yet."

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

She believes, rightly so in my opinion, that newspapers can never reach the so-desired "young reader" as long as they insist on geezers, dinosaurs, and lesser old farts deciding how to do that wonderful thing. She believes young people should make those decisions, and I do not argue that logic.

Why do you accept this, Dave? I reject it for at least four reasons:

1.) As long as newspapers pay newspaper wages and hire from journalism schools, you'll be getting nothing new. Have you spoken to any journalism classes or read any college news media (even of the underground variety) or listened to college radio in the past few years? It is like looking into the chimp cage -- less evolved creatures mimicking the same buzzwords and platitudes already found in newsrooms, using the same techniques, only less polished. Their media attempt to reach their peers the same way their professional counterparts do. If there were anything worthwhile being produced in those venues, newspapers would have stolen it by now. If newspapers want something new, they are fishing the wrong ponds and using the wrong bait and not enough of it.

2.) Most of us started out on smaller papers that, for economic reasons, had newsrooms that were primarily young. "Attracting young readers" has been the mantra for as long as I've been in newspapers, and newspapers put out by young staffs have proved no more adept than anyone else as accomplishing this. I landed my first full-time job in 1979 when I was 19. The editor was 29, and almost everyone in the newsrooms (two papers) was somewhere between those ages. At the time, the papers had more than 100,000 circulation and today they don't exist. We modeled ourselves after larger papers because all of us wanted to move on to the next level. That is, individually, what eager young careerists do, then and now. We were just like older papers, only with more typos and worse decision-making. Young readers didn't like us. Old readers didn't like us. Middle-age readers didn't like us.

3.) What you have running large newsrooms now are generally bald guys (or their female equivalents) who have trained themselves to spew that latest managementspeak that will help them separate themselves from the other fossils in the building, at least superficially. But half of them attained their status by telling those who outrank them exactly what they want to hear, and they tend to hire and promote people just like them in that regard. Again, what you get are younger versions of the same model. And what is that model? Suddenly, after two or three decades of ardent career climbing, the editor of the high school paper or president of the chess club has finally attained the long-elusive status of hippest person in the room? I think not.

4.) We've seen over the past 10 years not new ideas but the recycling of gimmicks that already failed in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s. The people proposing such "innovations" may either be too unschooled in newspaper history to know any better, or they may just have nothing else to suggest and they hope like hell no one remembers that the paper tried hyper-local in 1975, "blew up the newsroom" in 1980, bought out the old-timers in 1990 and got nowhere.

It's not the technology and it's not the age of the workers that are the problems, it is passionless, sterile products that are doomed to that fate when constipated bureaucrats are in charge. And that is generally the case whether you are talking daily newspaper, alternative weekly or student newspaper. It leads to dullness no matter the age of the creators. You can hire a bunch of kids, but history shows they'll most often be the wrong kids -- wannabecools rather than the real thing.

 

[SportsDude]

I think she means that pop culture hip and technological savy psychobabble is the way to reach new readers.

 

[Appgrad05]

Another day, another person that knows how to save the industry. ...

 

[captzulu]

Here's the link to the whole column, if anyone wants to read that excerpt in its context.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003784660

I think this excerpt is a bit more indicative of the point she was trying to make in the column:

"The lesson is that we who love the pursuit of objectivity, truth, and storytelling and don’t want to see the fourth branch of government fall into the hands of unwieldy citizen journalists “reporting” on hyperlocal knitting circles all need to get more nimble. Young journalists are inherently great at this, but when they finally secure those tough-to-get jobs in newsrooms they often wind up disillusioned by the collision of unseasoned enthusiasm vs. cynical veterans and a culture framed by losing and lackluster leadership. "

While her column smacks of someone who was frustrated about not being able to effect any rapid change at her newspaper and newspapers' slow pace of innovation (not a surprise, and can't say she doesn't have reasons to be frustrated), I think she makes a good point about many newspaper efforts to court young readers. Those efforts are often based on the "let's give them more teen-oriented stories on A1" or "let's launch a youth page" approach. She argues that the problem isn't so much editorial content as it is the method of delivering the content. She's saying that we need to deliver our content to where the young readers are, not try to use gimmicks to lure them to a platform that they aren't in the habit of using. I can agree with that point. However, I disagree with the other point she seemed to be trying to make: that print journalism is going out of style. While I fully appreciate the extra power and dimensions that multimedia opens up for journalism, the fact that much of the journalism content that is delivered via the social networks today is still in the form of the written word would seem to dispute her point.

 

[espnguy]

Sounds like the journalistic version of socialized medicine ;D

 

[ink-stained wretch]

Newspapers need fewer managers and more leaders.

Spelberg was once asked how he knew that the first 15 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" was what the audience wanted. His reply was along the lines of I don't care what the audience wants. I know what I want.

It helps to be a creative genius, of course.

Back in the day, prior to budget meetings, I would call home and ask the wife what they were talking about at her job. That was my one-person focus group. It worked surprisingly well — likely because I filtered the results through my own prejudices.

Were I still management scum, I'd be calling both my sons to find out what people were talking about. But because I'm back on the street, I've got a pretty good idea.

 

[Barsuk]

Meagan_Web2.0

This was too good to go unrecognized.