J-School Envy

If any fellow journalists/Medill alumni are reading this blog, you should check out a video on Apple's Web site that shows the new journalism school building at Arizona State University. I had no idea ASU was even on the j-school map, but the facility is incredible and it looks like they really know what they're doing in terms of training the Journalists of the Future.

The video goes a little overboard on the "Macs are AMAZING!" message (it's a commercial, after all), but it's evident that ASU has taken a smart approach to teaching the multimedia aspects of journalism that a lot of other j-schools have publicly struggled with.

At this point in time, journalists need to be self-sufficient jacks-and-jills-of-all-trades. The point is, you can't just write. You can't just shoot and edit video. You have to be able to create quality content for multiple platforms or you're going to be unemployed. (Actually, each passing week seems to bring another sad obituary of another daily newspaper, so chances are you won't be employed as a traditional journalist anyway.)

I think the caveat of creating "quality" content is where much of the tech-focused journalistic training falls apart. Giving someone six different colors to paint with and not telling them which colors go together or when to use blue and when to use orange can make for a lot of ugly art. So to for multimedia news coverage. All the fancy Macs in the world won't help you become a better journalist unless that technology is paired with training in the fundamentals of reporting.

Despite my training as a print journalist, my platform these days is almost completely multimedia--audio, video and slide shows. Sure, the fact that I could teach myself how to use Final Cut Pro was a great help in making the leap from written words to video frames. And, yes, the medium is different, but the skills and elements needed to turn a blank Final Cut Pro timeline into a finished video are eerily similar to what it takes to turn a blank word Document into a publishable text story. Good reporting matters.

OK, I'll get off my soap box now. As long as we're talking about text vs. video, check out my latest effort. For this one, I had so much good stuff that I made a video and wrote a story to go along with it. Incidentally, the subjects of the profile--Michael Mahler and Alan Schmuckler--are definitely going places. I can't wait to say "I knew them when..."

Christmas Break: NU Names Morton O. Schapiro as New President

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Christmas blog posts to bring you an important news flash!

This morning, Northwestern University announced that its next president will be Morton O. Schapiro, current president of Williams College. Check out the video interview I produced below and visit the nifty new president Web site for more coverage.

Friends with the Colonel

Last night I received a Facebook friend request from Colonel Tribune. When I clicked on his profile, I initally thought it was just another "fake" profile that someone had created to give a Facebook presence to a celebrity or dead historical figure. After all, I'm Facebook friends with Derrek Lee and Kelly Ripa, too.

But after inspecting the Colonel's profile and Facebook activity, it became clear that this was not some college kid's homage to Col. McCormick. It is in fact a clever online marketing strategy being employed by the Chicago Tribune's online division. Rather than creating an impersonal Tribune account on various social networking sites, the Colonel serves as the Trib's "Web Ambassador" on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube. They have cross-promoted him in Redeye and must have someone closely monitoring his Facebook account, because every new friend receives a personalized "Thanks for the add!" wall post. Mine arrived this morning.

This is ridiculously clever and, at least for me, it works. I've clearly spent some time poking around Tribune content to see what this is all about, and oddly enough, I still want to be the Colonel's Facebook friend, even if he is just a portal to chicagotribune.com. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the newspaper hat.

My Skills Are Obsolete

I always thought journalism would be one of those fields that the world could never do without, but apparently I was wrong. Like so many other seemingly useful abilities, journalism is obsolete.

Before you comfort me and my poor choice of profession, check the complete list. Maybe your skills are obsolete, too!

Unfortunately, this wiki of invalid proficiencies must not have a dedicated community of eagle-eyed editors that watch over the content Wikipedia-style, so it's completely wrong about journalism and a few other still-valid skills. But it makes up for that by highlighting plenty of legitimately obsolete proficiencies, from asbestos installation to zipping archives across multiple floppy drives.

The majority of the entries are somewhat obvious, as they revolve around now-defunct technology, but it's still an entertaining way of thinking about your life. What skills do you possess that are simply no longer necessary? This begs yet another question: What skills are you honing right now that might appear on this list in the not-so-distant future?

Technology is advancing at a mind-boggling pace. My children will probably have a hard time believing that there was a time in my life when every phone conversation was tethered to the telephone on my kitchen wall. Or that I actually had to rewind a movie when I was done watching it. Will the word "rewind" even have the same meaning and connotations anymore? Changes in technology and the abolition of related "skills" might dictate changes in colloquialisms and catch phrases.

At the same time, some skills (like journalism!) are clearly timeless and should never appear on this list because they simply cannot be outmoded. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a world where people don't know how to caulk their wagon to ford the river. That's a life skill.

I should have been a programmer...

How cool is Adrian Holovaty? This guy never seems to run out of ideas. Lucky for him (and us), Holovaty has been blessed with the endless curiosity of a journalist and the technical know-how of a programmer. He already made a name for himself with his Chicago Crime Google Maps mash-up (which plots recent crimes reported by the Chicago Police Department on a Google Map and sorts them by type, date, street, etc.), and his latest project is potentially even cooler.

EveryBlock is a site devoted to telling you more about your neighborhood than you ever knew you wanted to know. Currently unleashed on Chicago, San Francisco and New York City, the site aggregates location-specific (er, city block-specific) data, news and online activity from a variety of disparate sources and organizes it all by neighborhood.

As a journalist, a new media enthusiast and a Chicagoan, I am slightly in awe of this. With the proliferation of innovative online methods for sharing news, opinions and information, EveryBlock wants to serve as both a compass and an EKG machine: Point it toward a neighborhood and it delivers the pulse through a combination of news, data and the latest geo-tagged Flickr photos. What a phenomenal idea!

In his introductory statements about EveryBlock, Holovaty offers a new definition of "news" that is potentially shocking to old school newspapermen, but perhaps quite prescient given the shifts that are occurring in the media industry today.

We like to toss around the word "news" to describe all of this, and that might surprise you at first. Isn't news what appears on the front page of the New York Times? Isn't news something produced by professional journalists?

Well, it can be -- and we include as much of that on EveryBlock as possible. But, in our minds, "news" at the neighborhood or block level means a lot more. On EveryBlock, "Somebody reviewed the new Italian restaurant down the street on Yelp" is news. "Somebody took a photo of that cool house on your block and posted it to Flickr" is news. "The NYPD posted its weekly crime report for your neighborhood" is news. If it's in your neighborhood and it happened recently, it's news on EveryBlock.

At the very least, Holovaty's latest innovation gives whole new meaning to the phrase "citizen journalism" and this could be the start of something big. Stay tuned.

And as long as we're on the subject of programmer-journalists, I definitely should have studied the technology first and then learned how to report. It would have been so much cheaper that way...

Chicago Tribune Redesigned! (Hello? Is this thing on?)

Raise your hand if you read a printed copy of the Chicago Tribune this morning? Anyone? No? OK, well, I did, so let me be the first to tell you: The print version of the Chicago Tribune has been redesigned!

What? You get all your news online? Oh. Well, then maybe you will respond better to a visual representation of the redesign:

Aside from making the newspaper page thinner (as in, not so wide), the most striking difference in the redesign is the lack of the familiar Chicago Tribune blue in the masthead. I always liked that color blue and I assumed it was always in the masthead, so I choked on my breakfast when I first saw this. Then I turned to page two and saw the above graphic. Apparently the blue masthead has only been around as long as I have, so it's not like they're undoing a century-long tradition or something. Just a quarter century. I can live with that. Besides, the new masthead doesn't look that bad and if this prolongs the life of the printed newspaper page by even one day, I'm all for it. (Stop laughing at me.)

It's telling that there are very few blogs or articles talking about the Trib's redesign, as this would have been much bigger news back in the pre-blogosphere days and probably would have started a widespread chain of reader angst. As it is now, the Trib will probably just have to deal with a few angry elderly readers, whose appalled letters will be printed in the paper's letters section, where other elderly readers will read them. Meanwhile, life goes on uninterrupted online. What did they do? Less blue, you say? Yawn.

I think this guy sums it up pretty well. A redesign is just the Trib's way of possibly saving a few bucks, while failing to address bigger problems of how to best use the Web to increase audience share, increase revenue and increase the quality of reporting. These are pressing questions that go well beyond the beauty of a new font or the color on Page One. The old joke has been rewritten: What's black and white and red all over? A newspaper that's losing money.

The World As I Know It

Jeez, a guy doesn't write in his blog for a week or two and the whole world turns upside down in his absence. The following facts have recently come to my attention: Stephen Colbert is running for President of the United States, the Medill School of Journalism wants to change its name, Dumbledore has been gay all along and beloved Northwestern mascot Willie the Wildcat now looks like a soulless black dog. Let's tackle these burning issues in order of importance.

Willie the Wildcat now looks like a soulless black dog.
I've got to admit it--I've always liked Willie. Compared to his fellow overgrown stuffed toys in the Big Ten, he is particularly stellar. Willie doesn't offend anyone, he isn't wearing a skirt and he doesn't look like he's recently been stung by a bee. But something is different now. The cuddly-yet-fierce symbol of purple pride has received a horrifying face transplant for the 2007 season. It's ironic that this should happen at a time when the Cardiac 'Cats are actually playing some decent (if consistently inconsistent) football and are one win away from bowl-game eligibility. Nevertheless, I submit the following photographic evidence:

Old Willie

New Willie

With a jersey change and a few minor adjustments to fur color, Willie's entire demeanor has been altered. Once a simultaneously friendly and ferocious mascot, he now appears confused, with lifeless eyes and a slack grin. He also seems to be in desperate need of a bench press to work off those cat boobs. (The picture really doesn't do them justice...they're probably D cups.) His hands have also been changed from the standard four-fingered gray cartoon grip to a strange new black claw. While this makes sense anatomically, it doesn't make sense for a mascot. I just don't understand why Willie had to evolve. Maybe it's just me. But enough about that...There's more news to discuss!

Stephen Colbert is running for President of the United States.
How do you get young voters to care about the 2008 election? Have their favorite comedian toss his hat into the electoral ring! I've got to hand it to Colbert--this is brilliant. It's hilarious, it's free publicity for his new book (which also seems hilarious, based on my 25-minute skim in Borders) and it might actually have some sort of effect on the polls, at least in his home state of South Carolina. At the same time, doesn't Colbert's shenanigan make you just a little bit sad for American democracy? On the one hand, it shows that presidential politics is completely dominated by a few powerfully rich people, not one of which has yet captivated the political imaginations of a majority. On the other hand, the class clown can now make a mockery of the process the same way he did during the student council elections back in high school. But don't get me wrong...it's still hilarious. I can't wait until he starts showing up at debates.

Dumbledore was gay all along.
OK, JK Rowling, I think you're done. Wasn't having the best-selling children's book series enough for you? Do you really need more publicity? When it comes to literature, I'm the biggest advocate of the fact that the author knows what they meant when they were writing the book. Nothing drives me battier than listening to a room full of English majors debate the psychological reasons as to why Hemingway decided to use a semicolon instead of a comma. The words on the page have a certain meaning to the author and a certain meaning to the reader. There doesn't have to be a consensus. However, I do not support an author who returns to her text and changes things after the fact, elaborating on plot points and character development that she didn't include in the actual book. Dumbledore's sexual orientation has little to do with this: If you want to tell us what the characters did or thought or felt and why, then write another book! Don't change the course of your published works during a Q & A session in New York City! How weak is that? As for the outing of Dumbledore, the fact that she was answering a child's question and decided to go that route shows a tremendous lack of tact and a pathetic need for the limelight. Why does there have to be a pall of social controversy over something that was so well-written and entertaining to so many people? It's a shame.

Medill wants to change its name.
When this story broke in the Daily Northwestern, the Medill alumni listserv sprang into action, with various well-informed Medillians pontificating (do we ever do anything else?) on the pros and (mostly) cons of a name change to our beloved alma mater. My diplomas will always say "Medill School of Journalism" and that makes me happy. As to whether or not the name needs to change to reflect the marketing wing of the school, I'm staying out of that rumble. There have been many suggestions for new names, but I doubt the NU Board of Trustees will approve anything too outlandish. The Medill brand will remain, no matter what configuration of words ends up following it. I think Joey Medill can rest in peace.

High School Journalism Day Links

This post is for all of the high schoolers who attended Medill's High School Journalism Day festivities. Below you'll find links to the sites that I mentioned in my presentation, as well as other links that I didn't have time to cover. Good luck!

Background
EPIC 2014
This Flash project by Matt Thompson and Robin Sloan offers a bleak potential outlook on the media landscape in 2014, but some of their theories on user-generated content are already coming true (in a much more positive way, I think!).

Journalism 2.0
Mark Brigg's "Digital Literacy Guide for the Information Age." This is required reading for anyone who wants to be a journalist in today's world.

RSS Feeds and Feed Readers
RSS FAQ
A good starting point for understanding the wacky world of Really Simple Syndication.

Google Reader
The most useful feed reader you can find. Subscribe, star, share and send items from your Google Reader.

Web Sites and Blogging
Blogger
Create a blog like mine. Well, not exactly like mine. Find a niche and write with passion. Remember--it's not a journal, it's a conversation.

WordPress.com
Create a blog or perhaps even a simple Web site for your high school newspaper, as I demonstrated during the presentation.

Web Site Analytics
Google Analytics
Extremely user-friendly and it offers comprehensive statistical visitor analysis for your site.

Feed Burner
Tracks RSS subscriptions and visitor stats for your site.

Miscellaneous
Web 2.0 API List
Loads of cool new Web sites and services. You could probably spend days on this.

Resources for Web Workers
Mindy McAdams' launching pad for online journalistic success. If you're interested in improving your knowledge of Web design, this is the place to start. HTML, CSS and Flash are all covered here.

Convicted by the press, even in death

The top story on CNN.com right now is the death of Richard Jewell, which is accompanied by the headline "One-time Olympic park bombing suspect Richard Jewell dies." Jewell was only 44 and reportedly died from diabetes complications and kidney failure.

It kind of irks me that this is the best headline they could write to summarize the life and times of Richard Jewell. At the very least, I think the press owes it to him to include the words "wrongly" or "cleared" in any headline that hints at his being a suspected bomber. CNN tells the story this way:

"He was originally hailed as a hero for moving people away, but he was later thrust into a different light when the FBI suspected that he had set off the bomb to give himself an opportunity to be a hero.

For weeks, reporters and camera crews camped outside Jewell's Atlanta apartment, capturing every move that he -- and the FBI -- made.

He later sued the FBI and several media organizations. CNN and NBC were among the organizations that settled with him."

The resolution of this case--Jewell was innocent and some lunatic named Eric Robert Rudolph was the true culprit--was not nearly as widely covered as the 12 weeks of public scrutiny of Richard Jewell. As such, the incident is now one of those cases they teach you about in journalism ethics class as an example of what not to do. Jewell was considered a suspect by the FBI, but he was convicted without a trial by the media. This is also an early example (thanks to CNN) of how the 24-hour news cycle can lead to badly reported news and premature conclusions. Given the power and influence of the press, there should always be a methodical search for the truth, followed by responsible reporting of the facts. Conjecture and speculation have no place on the evening news. There is nothing lower than throwing caution to the wind for ratings and readers, while doing irreparable damage to a person's public reputation.

Now that the man has died, you would think the media would be willing to eat a little more crow over this. But they won't.

Quote of the Week

Grad student: This quarter has just been so hard.

Me: Well, don't worry, it'll get better as you go through the program.

Grad student: Oh, yeah, the tech guy is telling me that it gets better.

Me: Actually, I went through the program myself.

Grad student: [shocked] Oh! You did? Wow! When did you graduate?

Aaaand....Scene.

She proceeded to be much more open to my advice after she found out that I had the right pedigree. If I'm ever this rude to you, please feel free to shoot me off of my high horse.