Dangerous Ideas: Higher Ed Disruption

This month’s Carnival of Journalism asks: What is your most dangerous idea for pushing the boundaries of journalism?” and requests the response via video. LOVE ME some dangerous ideas.

Of course, my laptop mic is broken, which has caused me no end of problems for quite awhile now, so I kind of look like I’m looming in this video because I had to prop up the phone somehow (sorry). I’m en route to a baseball game (hence the t-shirt), but if I get time later I’ll post some words to go along with the video.

I’m not news that higher ed may be next up for the kind of digital disruption we’ve seen in journalism; in many respects it has already begun with the popularity of online courses. In this video, I speculate on whether journalism may be one of the first academic fields to undergo the kind of disruption that could ultimately dismantle the university as we know it, fueled by faculty members who have had to think about and utilize digital tools and new methods of information distribution.

I should perhaps note that I’m not arguing this would be all to the good – it is, indeed, dangerous. Universities do important things for students, knowledge, and communities. But it could be an exciting ride with some positive outcomes for education and for journalism. If you are one of those who think that journalism schools are obsolete and should just disappear, well, you are wrong as I’ve written about that before here and here.

Two Steps To Success: Ride the Google Wave, Then Focus On Longer-Form Quality

This post is a response to the February  Journalism Carnival, which asked us: “What emerging technology or digital trend do you think will have a significant impact on journalism in the year or two ahead? And how do you see it playing out in terms of application by journalists, and impact?”

I already did a little prognosticating just a couple of months ago over at Nieman Lab, but here’s a somewhat half-formed  idea I’ve been playing around with in my head and talking about with my research buddy, Jonathan Groves of Drury University.  I don’t have any hard data on this yet. But here’s one possible “digital trend” we could see developing…

Recently, there have been a number of encouraging pieces like this and this suggesting that long-form, serious journalism on the web, or on the tablet as the case may be, is thriving. Exciting, almost too-good-to-be-true for democracy-depends-on-journalism nerds like me.

What I’m wondering, though, is if news organizations have to go through a series of  stages in order to find success with serious, hard-hitting, longer reads on the web.  Sure, some sites like the Atavist may be able to bypass a step, but maybe most news organziations have to do some hardcore SEO, shorter pieces, aggregation, and other aggressive page-view garnering tactics first, before you can move into the second stage where your longer pieces get traction online.

Bear in mind again I’m just speculating here.

Groves and I did a study at the Christian Science Monitor, which eliminated its daily print edition a couple of years ago, going not only Web-first but Web-only, although they do still have a magazine-like print weekly. The Monitor aggressively used SEO techniques, shortened their stories, increased their updating frequency, and monitored Google Trends in order to assign stories on popular newsy search topics, and  was able to quickly reach a goal of increasing their page views from just three million to 25 million by 2010. Just the other day a non-journalist friend of mine who has never heard of the Monitor sent me a story from it she had found via searching Google for stories about the then-hot Komen vs. Planned Parenthood story; it was one of the top results. I’m pretty sure she never would have come across one of their stories before the transition. Not only are they boosting page views, they are increasing their brand awareness as a place to go to for important news. If the Monitor would have kept doing exactly what they were doing, just repurposing print content for the web, I’m not sure they would still even be a player in the space, regardless of how much great journalism they are doing, even though these tactics caused understandable anxiety for many staffers and journalism lovers alike.

But once your brand has been established as a web player, can you then start to focus on doing the kind of stuff journalists do best,  more in-depth reporting? Do sites like Slate and the Atlantic have success with long-form because they’ve already established themselves as web-savvy?

Sometimes I think we want a one-size-fits-all, linear solution to the tumult in the news business when the the real “answer,” such that it is, is that you have to walk before you can run, and that your transition for success SHOULD, and indeed must, have a lot of pivots in it, as most good entrepreneurial thinkers know.  It reminds me of teaching beginning news reporting. I don’t want my students to only know how to write boring, inverted pyramid, formulaic, inside-baseball news stories. But I’ve learned from experience it is hard to teach them how to break the rules until they’ve learned the rules in the first place. Somehow, learning to write the most basic, simple story launches you into a space in which you can then start doing some more interesting things as a reporter and a writer. Some times you have to learn a certain skill – how to be smart on the web – before you can start creatively melding that skill with some of your higher values of investigative journalism. You have to experiment and learn some of the rules and norms of a new medium and get out of your comfort zone while doing it, and then you can move forward from there.

Every time I write a blog post, I think, well, that was not as profound as it seemed when I first had the thought. But anyway, I wonder if that is one “digital trend” we will see in the future – a kind of two-step process to great web journalism.

#Memstorm: Twitter as a Community-Driven Breaking News Reporting Tool

I’m working on a new study that I will be presenting at the 2012 International Symposium on Online Journalism in Austin, Texas. I welcome feedback and participation and hope to share the results when completed.

This study aims at an in-depth exploration of how citizens and journalists in Memphis have come to utilize Twitter and the hashtag #Memstorm as a collaborative breaking news reporting tool when severe weather hits the region.  It examines some of the factors that motivate public participation and looks at how this new, always-on community-driven communication system – what scholar Alfred Hermidahas called “ambient journalism”  - is affecting local journalism, building on previous theory and research revealing how social media has helped make the news process increasingly participatory. I hope to show how Memphians are building community online and playing a role in sharing information vital to public health and welfare.

In addition to content/textual analysis of all Tweets archived from last April’s major storms, I’m also conducting a survey and doing a few interviews with particularly active local weather Tweeters as well. You can take my survey here, or if you are interested in being an interview participant, please email me at carrielisabrown@gmail.com or leave a comment here.

If you’ve never heard of the #memstorm, you can learn a little bit about it from local entrepreneur and CEO of startup StiQRd Aaron Prather’s Ignite Memphis talk last year.

Here’s an excerpt from my paper abstract that also gives some background: In the late winter and early spring of 2011, a series of powerful storms pounded Memphis, Tennessee and the surrounding region, driving residents not only to their television sets but to their Twitter streams for the latest information on funnel cloud sightings, flash flooding and power outages. Sirens blared and people huddled in basements and bathrooms off and on for two days, but when all was said and done Memphis was relatively lucky; the same system of storms caused much more extreme damage and loss of life in Joplin, Missouri and Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

While wild weather with torrential rain and tornados are not unusual in the Mid-South, the ability to both access and contribute to another real-time source of information in addition to the venerable local television meteorologists and other traditional news outlets is a relatively new phenomenon that exemplifies the participatory, two-way power of today’s digital tools.  Community members converged around the hashtag #Memstorm to share information, photos, and video on the storm and interact with others;  according to data collected by Prather and referenced here by Amy Howell of Howell Marketing, at the height of the storm, #memstorm impressions reached 1.4 million, with over 200,000 Twitter accounts being reached;  0.01 percent of all tweets on Twitter were being tagged with #memstorm.

You can read the full abstract here.

 

 

If You have Used the #Memstorm Hashtag on Twitter, Please Take My Survey

Sorry the formatting looks a little bit funny here. I would sure appreciate your participation! I will also be asking a few folks who I know have been very active in using the hashtag to consider doing an interview. If you are an active hashtag user and would like to volunteer for an interview, please contact me in the comments or @brizzyc on Twitter.

One Way Journalism Schools Will Survive and Thrive

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t dedicate my life to studying and teaching journalism in order to help people learn to sell products or bolster a company’s image. My heart and my roots are old school, democracy-lovin, watchdoggin journalism.

But to those who think collegiate journalism programs are now obsolete, I say au contraire mon fraire. The stuff we are really good at – creating content, reporting, storytelling – are more in demand than ever before.

According to this piece by marketing and new media expert Brian Solis, “brands can earn greater attention, reach, and results by investing in a journalistic approach. It’s a move away from promotional content to the delivery of useful, entertaining, or meaningful engagement and experiences through new media.”

Business schools and marketing programs do a great job teaching students social media strategy and ROI, but journalism departments remain the place to go for actually gettin ‘r done when it comes to creating stuff that will capture attention, increasingly in short supply in our information-saturated world.

I think this is a good thing not only for the sustainability of my chosen profession, but because even if you ultimate goal is making better content that will make people buy Wheaties, if you spend some time in a journalism school, maybe just a little bit of the respect for good journalism and its importance in our society might rub off, and the chances are better that you will become somebody who will consume and demand it. And if we all live in a world in which we are forced to view ads, they might as well be interesting and relevant ones that actually impart some useful information.

**Update: And here’s another piece I just came across by Jeremiah Owyang that shows the importance of good content. He says: “Our industry is afflicted with shiny object syndrome, a focus on the new tools, without thinking about the content that will drive it.”

Change The Game

Adapt or die.

I just finally saw the movie Moneyball. I’m tempted to show it to all my journalism students from now on. I wish somebody had told me when I was young that maybe, just maybe, you don’t always have to play by the rules to win.

It’s not so much a movie about baseball, or even about data vs. intuition, but a movie about disruption. When the game isn’t fair – and it never is – think different.

It is making me think about of last month’s Carnival of Journalism prompt by Michael Rosenblum and how my own thinking, not only about journalism but about life in general, has evolved over the past few years. Institutions and established ways of doing things can be powerful and valuable. But not only to they often outlive their utility and sustainability, they often serve to blind us to possibilities. We can spend our lives pouring our limited energy and time into propping up failing institutions or patterns of thinking that ultimately exploit our labor, or we can change the game.

The Carnival focused on money and whether journalists should fear it or strive to make more of it, prompting many responses suggesting that passion is more important than dollars. But the larger question isn’t compensation per se but it’s what you do with your passion – do you pour it into somebody else’s often tired ideas, or do you use it to push forward? Do you think like a serf or an entrepreneur?

I read a story in the Guardian today about how one of the top five regrets of the dying is “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.” But it’s not so much “work” that is so bad. Working toward something that you believe in and that engages you creatively is a good thing, even if it involves risk. Working for the proverbial Man and doing things as they’ve always been done without questioning, that you may live to regret.

This post probably is incoherent…I can’t really put into words what is in my head right now. But one thing I’ve always loved about sports is that they show us a microcosm of the very essence of a lot of what life itself is about.

 

Can a Good Journalist Be a Good Capitalist? [Yes]

The January Carnival of Journalism wonders why journalists seem adverse to the idea of making money.

I’ve never noticed this phenomenon, but Michael Rosenblum says that Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Dean Nick Lehman “recoiled” at the notion of creating an entrepreneurial journalism program. Wow. Yikes. That surprises me.

My journalism school at the University of Memphis  is not nearly as elite or well-resourced as our New York City counterparts, but we are making strides in this area. One of my colleagues, Dr. Lurene Kelley, is leading an effort to transform one of our graduate courses that used to focus on “administration” into an exciting entrepreneurial class in which students will learn to build a business plan and pitch it. She is partnering with LaunchMemphis, a local group working to grow our city’s entrepreneurial community, and students will get real, hands-on exposure to the world of startups.  I’m thrilled about this development and hope to help continue to expand these efforts in our department.

I also agree that making money can release journalists from the thankless, soul-sucking constrictions of moribund institutions. To speak for myself, if I wasn’t shackled to a largely irrelevant and outdated academic system that rewards me primarily for publishing studies recycling tired ideas in journals nobody reads, I could be doing much more innovative work to help prepare students and journalists for the 21st Century.

To take just one small example, just yesterday I saw the call for proposals for the Knight Community Information Challenge. I already know of some local foundations that are interested in this issue and could be possible partners with our journalism school in creating something new and exciting on the web and on the ground – and our community, wracked by massive cutbacks in local news organizations, desperately needs it. Instead of pursuing this, I will spent 15 hours over the next couple of weeks changing the academic citation style in a paper I wrote, which is rote, useless busywork.  Things like this do make you want to go into business for yourself so you can take advantage of these kinds of opportunities in the exciting time we live in. Maybe one day I will.

However, I will say this. Being SKEPTICAL about money and its power to corrupt good journalism is a different thing. I think that is perfectly healthy. The desire to make money doesn’t mean that I will do anything and everything to make that happen, and, in the long run, that’s good for business, too, given that what we sell is credibility. Journalists *are* particularly sensitive to financial pressures because in the course of their work they see how money corrupts the political process, the environment, and so and and so forth, though it also can do good, as evidenced in this article about Paul Allen I found inspiring. When I worked for the Committee of Concerned Journalists, almost 10 years ago now, long before the idea of entrepreneurship in journalism was “hot,” venerable but forward-thinking journalists like Bill Kovach talked all the time about the foolish false dichotomy of the old proverbial “Wall” between the business and editorial side of news organizations. Both sides need each other. Newsrooms need to communicate with and share information with the business side, but yes, financial pressures on editorial will ultimately compromise the business.