Starbucks-era journalism

You know you've got their attention when you get heckled during your presentation. At least that's my theory.

It happened at last Saturday's JACC NorCal conference (that's the Journalism Association of Community Colleges of Northern California), held at SJSU. My colleague Steve Sloan and I were the keynoters, addressing an audience of about 250 community college J-students and faculty on "Journalism in the Starbucks Era."

During our talk, we discussed some of the trends and online tools that are shaping journalism, including blogging, YouTube, Twitter and other forms of social media. I am a self-proclaimed blogging evangelist and a fan of Twitter, so my perspective on these tools is largely positive. I see them as tools, not as implements of destruction.

However, one CC faculty member, tucked in the last row, apparently disagreed. He took issue with the idea that bloggers could also be journalists. He interrupted us. Twice.

So here's what I told him: Blogging and journalism are not mutually exclusive. Journalism is what you do, not who you work for. Some journalists are also bloggers, and some bloggers do commit acts of journalism. After all, blogs are just another distribution channel, not the infidel.

Today, for example, some bloggers are doing something that looks a lot like journalism to me. They're digging through public records for background information on "Joe the (soon to be infamous) plumber," who was cited by Sen. John McCain in last night's presidential debate. Turns out that a number of the things McCain said about "Joe" last night are not true: Joe is registered as a Republican, not as an independent; he's a plumber's helper, not a plumbing business owner; and he doesn't make over $250,000 a year. Yes, it appears that Joe was a "plant."

Bloggers helped ferret some of that information out. Instead of looking at them as impediments, perhaps journalists should look at bloggers as potential resources...as people who could be helpful in these times of news organization cutbacks.

As the old saying goes, "Many hands make light work."

P.S. If you'd like to view my segment of our JACC presentation, you can see it on SlideShare at http://www.slideshare.net/camccune. Links to all my resources are included on the final slide. And if you didn't "Hack the Debate," be sure to check out that link.

Bad blogger!

Yeah, that's me. A bad blogger.

Reading the really excellent blogging advice offered on Ryan Sholin's latest brainstorm, the Wired Journalists network -- in response to the question, "What advice would you offer a journalist looking to start their own blog?" -- made me realize what a bad blogger I am.

I post irregularly. I started this blog with a focus...info related to my classes, targeted to my students...but I got tired of being focused and tired of censoring myself. I mean, periodically Bush does something so appalling that I just wanna rant. And you can't do that on a blog you're asking students to read.

I decided it was my blog, it has my name on it, and I could do whatever I wanted with it. So I did. I also started keeping separate class blogs.

Now I write about whatever strikes my fancy, whenever I have the time and the inspiration. I don't worry about readership, because I'm mostly writing for my own entertainment and satisfaction.

Of course, my personal blog is not my only blog. I maintain blogs for my classes (such as this one for my online news writing class) and contribute to the J-School's blogs (both of which I started). So I end up doing quite a bit of blogging...it's just kind of spread around and unfocused...kind of like me.

iMovie and YouTube...my classroom buddies!

The most wonderful thing happened in class the other day, right before my very eyes...learning, yes, learning!

For their final project for the broadcast segment in my Journalism 61 (beginning news writing) class, I asked students to rewrite one of their news stories or campus event blog posts for broadcast. Their task this week: Bring their broadcast script to class, record it using iMovie, upload it to the web (ya gotta love You Tube and blip.tv!), and post it to their blogs.

As they started recording, an interesting thing happened: They started rewriting their broadcast scripts. All around the room, I could see students crossing out a phrase here or adding a word there to improve flow and clarity. They scribbled notes between the double-spaced lines of their scripts (yes, there is a reason for that double-spacing!); they tweaked and they polished. A few even said, "I need to start over," and did a total rewrite before continuing with their recording.

One student, who'd knocked off her broadcast quickly during the first of this week's lab session (and who'd stuck around during the second one to help other students upload and link), came up to me at the end of class and said that she wasn't really happy with how hers had turned out and she was going to do it over. Yes!

It was great! I was so proud of them!

So here's what I learned: You can talk to students about the need to make broadcast writing more conversational; you can preach broadcast style and urge them to read it out loud to make sure it works...but nothing beats seeing yourself on screen and hearing your own voice reading your own script...and realizing that it doesn't quite cut it. That, and the realization that it'll be online for all the world to see, proved to be powerful motivators this week, so I'd call this assignment a success.

If you'd like to cruise over to my Journalism 61 class blog and check out the links to my students' blogs, here's the direct link: http://jour61.wordpress.com/

Journalism: Form or content?

As I was standing at the head of a classroom yesterday, watching Michael Wesch's Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us for the umpteenth time, I had a minor epiphany.

It was about halfway through, when you see on the screen [Title] does not define the form. It defines the content.










And I thought, you know, it's the same with journalists. It's what you do that makes you a journalist, not who you work for, or where your work is published or broadcast, or how it's distributed.

I'd just been talking about this very issue with my colleague Steve Sloan, a fellow blogger and my co-presenter at yesterday's JACC Norcal conference at SJSU (that's him at left). The night before, we'd both heard veteran broadcaster Sam Donaldson "diss" bloggers as he spoke at the RTVJ 50th Anniversary Reunion dinner.

Blogging is just opinion, Donaldson said, and without editors, how do you know if it's fact or fiction?

But when Donaldson offered his definition of a journalist, he didn't say anything about editors. He said, "We try to present our readers, our viewers, with things we believe to be true." Sometimes you make mistakes, he added, but if you do you correct them.

I didn't hear anything in that definition that would preclude a blogger from being a journalist, Sloan said.

And some of the mainstream media aren't exactly doing a great job of reporting the truth these days, I added. Does this mean they're not really journalists?

So in the middle of our JACC presentation on Podcasting, Blogging and New Journalism, as I listened once again to the Web 2.0 video, it hit me: [Journalism] does not define the form, it defines the content. It's what you do, not who you work for.

Links:

• My JMC blog post on Sam Donaldson's Oct. 12 presentations to JMC students and the RTVJ reunion dinner guests
• Steve Sloan's Technology & Mass Communications powerpoint, posted on his SJSU Tech on a Mission blog
• Michael Wesch's Digital Ethnography blog

Threats 'n fightin' words

I don't know if you've read about the death threats made against blogger Kathy Sierra and the blogosphere's response, including discussions about the need to foster a culture of web civility.

If not, you can catch up with this post and link from Sierra's blog, this joint statement by Sierra and Chris Locke (some of the threatening comments and images were posted on Locke's meankids.org blog, in addition to on Sierra's blog), and this NYT article, "A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs," that discusses the issue and offers links to some suggested codes of conduct.

This morning, I read "Bloggers, Don Imus and free speech," a column in today's Salon.com by Joan Walsh, who earlier wrote this thoughtful piece about the Sierra threats, "Men who hate women on the web." It got me thinking about it all again.

I don't know how I'd react to such threats online. However, I do clearly remember getting a nasty, anonymous note in response to a "letter to the editor" I'd written (criticizing some Bush administration policy) that was published in the Mercury News a few years ago. It was unsettling to think that some warped individual was angry enough and motivated enough to look up my home address and send me an obscene, threatening note. It made me feel like I should be looking over my shoulder; it made me wonder if this nutcase was motivated enough to show up on my doorstep someday. It was kind of scary.

Clearly, that note was meant to intimidate me...to shut me up. Unfortunately, I have to say it did...at least for a while. It made me think twice about submitting any more letters to the editor. It didn't totally stop me, but it did give me pause...and if I'm completely honest, it probably deterred me from writing a few times...before I got over it.

And that was just one threatening letter. I really don't know how I'd deal with an onslaught of nastiness and threatening comments on one of my blogs.

None of that has stopped me from blogging. And if you've read my blog, you know I don't shy away from criticizing the Bush administration. But, hey, my blog isn't exactly well-known or popular, so it's not exactly an issue at this point.

What I do know is that I'd have no qualms about deleting blog comments that are offensive, or blocking comments from mean, nasty or threatening individuals...on this blog or any of my class blogs. Maybe it's the teacher in me; maybe it's because they're my blogs.

I've never had to remove a student post, although I have talked to a student about a post that I felt was inappropriate. I explained why, and I asked the student to modify the post. That took care of it.

I hope that's the most I ever have to do.

Oh, if you have a moment, please check out Kathy Sierra's blog, Creating Passionate Users. Right now she's put up a "best of" series of posts that's simply fascinating. She's an original thinker, and it would be a loss to the rest of us if we let nasty web trolls knock people like her off the web.

(A version of this post is cross-posted on one of my class blogs.)

Professor Blogger

A sign of the times, perhaps?

According to BlogTogether, a blog for North Carolina bloggers and podcasters, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill is looking for a tenure-track prof who's a blogger.

An excerpt from the UNC ad says candidates should be "highly skilled in writing and editing online news, in blogging and in developing news content for the web."

Sounds like the future is now.

(Thanks to grad student Ryan Sholin for passing this on.)