Results tagged “media” from eHub

I have a unique vantage point from which to view the transitions facing our industry. This semester I've worked as a graduate research assistant for Knight Chair in News, Leadership and Community, Pam Fine. This spring we conducted a time-use study with some of the top newspaper editors in the country.

The goal is to gain a better understanding of how these editors budget their time. Data is still coming in, but an incidental finding appears to be that many participants are spending increasing amounts of time dealing with organizational change--things like restructuring, finances, new technology, and staff training--and less time focusing on the production of news.

It certainly is an interesting time to conduct such a study: furloughs, layoffs, buyouts, belly-up. 
 
How are newspapers to survive? Two words: horizontal integration.
 
In order to survive, newspapers must recast themselves not as print outlets, but as media outlets. The method(s) by which a news outlet chooses to disseminate information becomes a strategic business decision, based on the needs of the target audience. Not just print, broadcast or online, a true multi-platform approach to provide readers information on their terms--in their preferred media formats.

It's an even more interesting time to be fresh out of college, looking to land that first job as a journalist. So, moving forward, what skills are required to be a successful journalist?

I interviewed CNN's Political Director and Senior Executive Producer of Political Programming, Sam Feist, to get his take on what skills journalists need to be competitive in today's media marketplace.

CNN's Sam Feist on skills journalists need from Josh Patterson on Vimeo.

And for those who can't adapt...

In my post "Twitter for journalists: Examples of Twitter in action," I wrote about how journalists and media companies can use this platform to track breaking news, publicize content and network with other journalists/publications--in 140 words or less.

Facebook offers many of these advantages to a lesser extent. In my experience, Facebook is less useful than Twitter for following breaking news and covering a beat. Facebook shines at promoting content in a richer format than Twitter.

Here's an example of how a traditional news organization can promote content, and grow their readership through Facebook.

One of my "friends" on Facebook is NPR. News updates from NPR appear in my status feed, just like when a friend updates his or her status. Media outlets can also use their Facebook pages to upload pictures, video and interact with their audience.
 
So next time you're on Facebook, give NPR a poke.

It's a question journalists seem to be asking themselves every day now.

Why did I choose this profession?

Traditional newspapers are dying. Advertising is going off the deep end. Online is seemingly the only refuge.

The problem is that journalists moving online are realizing the demand for timely content is extraordinary. In Brian Solis' online article, he mentions several popular news entities and their interaction with followers via Twitter. The statusphere, as Solis refers to it, needs near-constant updating to keep followers interested. This puts an unrealistic, although necessary, strain on the journalists brave enough to commit to the idea.

Many news stories and columns have talked about the burnout journalists experience because of the fast-paced news environment. The trend is depressing, showing that professionals are leaving the game at increasingly younger ages. The job is demanding; News never sleeps. Journalists for the most part are also underpaid, so burnout comes from the amount they give after they've compared it with what they're receiving.

It's as though the public fails to understand what goes into reporting and packaging the news. People want to know, from reliable sources, what's going on. They just don't want to pay for it. The problem with the truth behind that statement is that there's not much journalists can do about it. Thanks to things such as Google, Twitter and the Web in general, information is available readily, and free of charge.

So where is Twitter leading the industry? Into a promising future, for those able and willing to keep up with the frantic pace. The fan base a journalist can build through online social networking will prove to be invaluable in the efforts to maintain journalistic careers.

The best and the brightest are the ones who can, and hopefully will, survive.

With the increased need for productivity in today's business environment, how many hours will we eventually be required to work?

The trend seems to be moving in the ultimate direction of 24 hours each day.

With that in mind, it seems there would be no rest for the weary, and certainly no sleep.

I say this as I reflect on the past four years of my life, during which my sleep cycle has experienced every kind of twist and turn known to humankind and pretzels. As time has gone on though, I've also realized that we adapt to getting less and less sleep. I know the recommended amount is  around eight hours, but in all honesty, I know very few people who adhere to that on a regular basis.

I'm happy with five or more.

Looking forward, I don't see how the habits I've formed while in college will change once I enter the work force. The phrase I always remind myself of is news doesn't sleep. If things happen at all hours, which they do, someone will need to be awake to cover them. Sleep deprivation seems to be inevitable in the media business. While some people can manage to be productive while tired, it's not the norm. 

So if news never sleeps, does that mean eventually we won't either?

Limitations of Science
The first thing you learn in middle school science is that science can't prove anything. Or at least that should have been the first thing you learned. Yes, friends, that includes evolution, creationism and all of the above. Science can only disprove that which is thought to be true. You learn that in order for scientific experiments and surveys to be valid, you must have a good sample size. The target group of respondents you survey must be a good sample of the larger population.

"Listen to me! I'm liberal!"
Max Blumenthal, journalist for The Daily Beast, an online Web site of media-related stories and blogs, must have been absent the day his middle school science teacher explained this. I'm joking of course, but only kind of.
Blumenthal wrote a blog based on a poll that said Rush Limbaugh was the least popular political figure of all the figures the firm polled, beating out Rev. Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright. Oh, yes. And one more thing. The firm that conducted the poll was a Democratic research firm, Greenberg-Quinlan-Rosner. Blumenthal makes mention of that small fact only briefly to avoid appearing obviously deceptive.

Selective truth?
Blumenthal goes on to criticize Limbaugh for hoping Obama's plans would fail. Now, I am not an avid supporter of Rush Limbaugh, nor do I agree with every word from his mouth, but it seems to me that any person in his right mind would hope the policies of his opposition would fail to be implemented or uphold. Does Blumenthal presume that any democrat would hope conservative policies or ideas succeed? I think not. It would be ridiculous to expect Limbaugh or any true conservative to wish that nationalized health care or a number of Obama's other aspirations come to be. It would be equally absurd to demand a liberal be supportive of Bush's tax cuts. See what I mean?
Besides that, anyone who's willing to base their beliefs and convictions on a democratically biased poll taken from a biased sample size is asking for trouble. If a poll was to truly be valid, it should be double-blind, so that neither the sample nor the surveyor had vested results in its outcome.

The machine keeps on...
Blumenthal's irrational rant just goes to show that, while democrats claim to be "open-minded," they are, by and large, the most close-minded of all. Angry little men like Blumenthal scrounge and scrape for a shred of evidence that the other side is wrong. Men like him jump to conclusions about what everyone else is at the drop of a hat.
When it comes down to it, both the media and the education system are liberal-run machines. So why should I be surprised that people like Blumenthal are the ones running their mouths behind a megaphone?

Innocent deceit?

My grandma hates pictures of herself. She despises them. At the sight of a camera, she buries her face in her arm. Ironically, she recently got a Facebook. But, in place of her own face as her profile picture, is a baby lamb.



When she joined Facebook, my grandma also joined multitudes of users who carefully and skillfully create a pseudo-identity via the Web.
Through social networking sites like Facebook, you can effectively boil who you are down to a profile page and catchy album titles. We pick a few favorite quotes to adorn our page--hopefully a good variety of inspirational and side-splittingly funny--post a cute status and we're good to go.

iGeneration

Call us Generation Y or Millennials, it's all the same. We are a bunch of tech-savvy, gadget-loving, self-promoters -- and there's nothing inherently wrong with that!
We have an image to keep and we know how to do it best. It didn't happen if it's not on Facbeook, right? You could almost say Facebook rules the world. Well, our world, at least. 
While social networking sites do just what they say, provide an excellent medium for connecting and communicating, they also enable us to wield on our audience a level of deception about who we really are. And adults are catching on.
We find it shocking that our parents and grandparents are now on Facebook, but soon, we too will find ourselves in the category of adults who use social networks.



YOUR MOM reads your wall. Seriously.

A 400 percent increase in adult users on social networking sites seems like a large swell now, but it's only going to increase as our generation, those born from 1982 to 2000, ages.
Many members of my generation perceive adult users on social networks as not to be trusted, creepy, and inept. This perception will certainly shift, as we ourselves become the middle-aged Facebook stalkers browsing through our cousin's girlfriend's pictures at 2 a.m.