The Faculty Blog

Can't happen here, I'm telling you m'dear*

2007-09-11T18:16:27Z

The Lost Remote has gone and said a huge "I told you so." A whole string of them, in fact. It's a list of things the site said that "were met with resistance or outright hostility." Heading the list:

"Nobody will break news on their site before the story airs."

Granted, although not enough stories get that treatment, the direction's clear. The rest of the list is pretty good, too, but I won't steal the thunder. Go thou and see for thyself. Let me let fly with one, and we'll see whether it could make it onto a similar list in '12:

No story will be withheld from the Web so it can run on the air first.

A little extreme, maybe, but stranger things have happened, and I think that ultimately it's on the way. Lost Remote is a great site to keep tabs on. It and TVNewser will do more to help keep up on TV-Web developments than anything else I know.
*tip o' th' hat & thanks to Frank Zappa

Starting to pay off?

2007-09-06T21:24:00Z

TV and newspapers will get serious about the Web -- or will have to get serious about the Web -- when online revenue gets some teeth. Until then, America's fixation on short-term gain will win out. Few (if any) newspaper sites truly make money; no TV station sites do. Newspaper sites get a serious number of eyeballs. TV station sites, uh, not so much. That's the consensus. Nearly all of the most-visited news sites in any given city belong to newspapers, not TV stations, which is a real danger signal for broadcasters. It's not that they can't catch up. It's a question of whether they actually will. If they don't, to the eyeball-gathering victors go the spoils. A new study from The Media Audit says TV stations are starting to get better traffic to their websites, based on a phone survey. More detail here. The study says 40 percent of Internet users go to local TV sites; frankly that strikes me as a bit high. I'm in no position to argue facts, though. Does seem clear that traffic to TV station sites is up. And that's encouraging, because they've largely been devoid of anything other than vapid promotional content. Now they have real, live news on them. But, fresh news? I think that the vast majority of stories on local TV sites are still shoveled from newscast airchecks. Newspapers that're into doing video are still way ahead in providing for-the-Web video content. "Web first" will rule. The question remains, who'll be first and foremost with "Web first," newspaper or TV sites? Newspapers still have a lock on news-seeking Web viewers, and that's the huge advantage they have for prying the video-watching audience away from TV.

Don't tell me your cable modem service is fast

2007-08-29T20:52:59Z

Here's a point raised by the Lost Remote that highlights the lousy Internet speed here in the good ol' U-S-of-A:

Broadband service in Japan is eight to 30 times faster than in the U.S., according to a report in today’s WaPo. It’s also much cheaper.

Imagine what news outlets could be doing with video if the connection were 30 times faster. We might have YouTube speed with Quicktime quality; at least, video would be far, far easier and more attractive to the audience than it is. One of the big hold-backs of Web video is the long loading time for decent video (the other one is the preroll ads you can't opt out of, but that's a whole 'nother rant), especially on DSL, which is what many of us have at home. The Japanese, by contrast, can see full-screen full-motion video, which is screamingly far ahead of cable Internet. For now I'll just have to dream.

The changing skill set of "J"ournalism

2007-03-27T19:01:44Z

Allow me to point you to a blog that is becoming a must-read for me, if for no other reason than confirmation of my sanity. Mindy McAdams teaches online journalism and wrote the book Flash Journalism: How to Create Multimedia News Packages. McAdams lays out the changing skill set required by today's new media world. Here are some quick highlights: * Students must have a better sense of the economics and business of media. * Media must embrace the computer science/engineering and business disciplines. * Every student should be a serious blogger. * New media is not a fad, but a fact. * Entrepreneurship in media is needed desperately.

The Creolization of media

2007-03-16T18:14:52Z

This compelling piece from New York magazine provides great insight for the 30+ set on how the Internet has changed the world. It details the regeneration of a chasm between young and old unseen since the 1950s. Definitely worth reading.

Future of newspapers?

2007-02-13T21:52:30Z

I'm on a list-serve that delivers a daily quote about journalism....Here is today's, which seems to be of note (and by a recipient of the Wm Allen White citation): "I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either." -- New York Times publisher and CEO Arthur Sulzberger tells Israel's Haaretz newspaper that declining profits may force the Times to abandon the paper edition in favor of online delivery.

PBS/Frontline series

2007-02-12T20:17:31Z

This upcoming series on Frontline is up our alley:

The series, called "News Wars" (at 10 p.m. on Channel 6), continues Feb. 20 and 27, and concludes March 27. It looks at the growing pressures for profits just as most news organizations are losing ground to all forms of technology; at changes around the globe that affect journalists everywhere; and, in Tuesday's episode, at the mounting legal attacks that threaten the press's ability to hold government accountable.

Here's the Bee's complete article about it. Check local listings for KTWU/KCPT showings.

Online ethics

2007-02-03T01:27:50Z

... if that isn't a contradiction in terms, at least in several of our minds. Poynter has run a program on the subject, from which it's produced a set of guidelines: Online Journalism Ethics: Guidelines from the Conference I gravely doubt this'll pull the Internet out of its Wild West infancy. I'm not knocking it per se, but the people who most need to pay attention to it are probably the least likely to. I'll try to look it over and see what it's worth. But not right now.

A little digital inspiration

2007-02-02T20:02:45Z

Some video on just what this Internet thing is all about...
Web 2.0...The machine is Us/ing us

Integrating research and teaching

2007-02-01T22:26:14Z

In the last convocation, Provost Lariviere said: “Doing research is your first responsibility… In exchange for providing you with money, support and time, we expect that you will make significant new discoveries throughout your career. This is hard work, but merely making those discoveries is not adequate. You must share them with the wider world, and we require that you do this in two ways: publish your discoveries so that they will have an impact nationally and internationally; and bring your discoveries into the classroom so as to have an impact on your students.” So... in terms of curriculum and assessment, how can we bring our discoveries into the classroom to have an impact on students? Obviously, updating the curriculum is a huge initiative that requires intense and prolonged work. Would taking this on now take too much time away from individual research and our collective efforts to build a research culture in the school? Are we already stretched too thin to accomplish both at the same time? Or can we find creative ways to integrate research and teaching, so that neither has to be put on a shelf? If so, maybe we could invite Dan Bernstein (or others) to do a FRED to help us figure out how to accomplish this. Here are a few ideas, for starters, on how we might integrate research and teaching: -- Use the school’s new research brownbag group as a springboard for us to learn about each other’s research and then make a special effort to invite colleagues into our classrooms to share their research in connection with course topics. -- Set up an annual j-school “research day” featuring a scholarly poster session for students and faculty, and perhaps use the poster session as a venue for some classroom assignments. -- Offer a senior research course and/or special topics graduate courses in which classes carry out collaborative research projects. Each student would write a paper from part of the data for conferences and journals, co-authored with each other and professors. Many AEJMC papers are the product of this kind of initiative. -- Offer summer research opportunities for undergrad students (including research internships) sponsored by media companies. -- Connect students with KU research centers. For instance, students can produce media content on behalf of centers, so they learn how to effectively communicate about research in other fields. -- Publish scholarly research about our pedagogical and curricular innovations in Journalism and Mass Communication Educator and write about these innovations for trade journals and white papers/reports. What do you think? Ideas?

Web deadlines will rule

2007-01-30T19:40:33Z

It strikes me that we have one, central commitment to make as a journalism program. Maybe I missed it at last week's meeting, but I don't think anybody said what it is. All else will flow from that commitment. Back in the day, we took the step of tossing out the sequences and playing up the similarities between the various "specialties." We dedicated ourselves to the proposition that students shouldn't concentrate on a track at the start of a journalism program, though we figured they would probably find their way into a specialty, albeit with greater flexibility than the old curriculum encouraged (allowed?). It's working. That was 10 years ago -- actually more, when you figure in the first curriculum review, which made recommendations that were pretty similar to what we adopted. In new-media dog-years, that's... well, a long time. When we moved to the converged curriculum, we knew that we'd have to keep reassessing, because the changing media world would make us reassess. And so it has, though we're kinda moseying around to it. By the same token that we said chuck the sequences, we now need to say chuck the legacy media. Well, not exactly "chuck" 'em, but just as multimedia study precedes specialization in our curriculum, working on deadline for the Web needs to come before working on deadline for newspaper, TV or whatever. The "Web first" model means that the Multimedia Newsroom will first get stories onto the Web, then put them on TV, instead of the current system of shoveling the stories over to the Web after the newscast. The same principle will operate for any other media lab. The legacy media won't go away, just as media specialization hasn't gone away. But they'll come second. That's the game as our graduates will soon be playing it, and as many of them already are. I toss this out for the taking of potshots . . . what the implications are for thinking- and skill-sets. . . how we'll deal with revenue models in the post-Google-click world . . . how the media business and the media-education business will change -- and remain the same. The question isn't whether this will happen. It's the same question we faced back down the road a ways: when it will happen. I say "soon."

Getting the ball rolling...

2007-01-29T20:30:41Z

Let's use this digital venue to continue the conversations started during the January 26, 2007 news faculty meeting. Of course, all faculty and staff (and the rest of the world) are able to comment on the thoughts shared here. We welcome the discourse and look forward to growth and success from this foray into the world of online collaboration.