Life in the Newsroom: September 2005 Archives

My birthday falls right after Thanksgiving, which is right at the beginning of the biggest shopping season of the year. Here's my wish list for this season; they're necessities for a photojournalism career and could also benefit the Multimedia Newsroom.

1. Nikon D2X Digital SLR camera

   

   This camera is Nikon's flagship professional model with all the latest upgrades and improvements. A package including the camera body, one lens and a few other accessories costs about $3,849. Something more practical for the Multimedia Newsroom would be a Nikon D70 package. It is a smaller, less durable model and isn't as fast as the D2X, which would make sports more difficult to shoot, but the camera body with a lens and accessories runs around $1,290.

2. Apple iBook or PowerBook G4 These laptops start out at $999 and run close to $3,000 for the highest-grade model. They are ideal for working in the field and from home. I know Adam Sechrist uses one to post to the KUJH-TV website after many volleyball games. You can send photos back to the office or post them straight to the website from your assignment or event. Of course, Adobe Photoshop, an Internet browser and various other programs are needed to streamline this workflow. They all cost money too.

3. iPod nano or a regular iPod

   

   At $249 and up, one of these is the cheapest item on my list so far, but also the least applicable to the newsroom. There are lots of capabilities with storing and taking photos, as well as with podcasting, but I'm not sure if those capabilities justify buying "company iPods." They are in use up at the Kansan, but only to listen to music in an effort to block out the constant cacophony of ringing phones, reporters' phone interviews, computer noises and general chatter.

4. Motorola RAZR V3 or ROKR E1 phone This is another more personal item, but on the other hand, company phones are common at almost any major business, including newspapers. I'm switching from T-Mobile to Cingular when my contract expires next month and will be choosing between these two phones. Both have video and digital photo capture abilities, but the ROKR also has the added feature of storing songs with iTunes and listening to them like you would on an iPod. Both range from $99 to closer to $300 depending on where you buy them.

The first two items on this list are geared toward professional photojournalists, while the second are items for personal use that can be applied to citizen journalism. I'm sure in the near future most, if not all, professional photojournalists will have some variation of every item on this list. It's just a matter of time. If I have my way these will all be in my possession by New Year's Eve. Of course, I may have to add another loan to my already growing debt. I may also have to weigh them against the option of purchasing a new car. What would be the use of these fancy gadgets if my piece of crap car breaks down on the way to an assignment? Ah, the decisions I will have to make. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to check previously owned vehicles online.

Photos from bestpricecameras.com and apple.com

My friend Anke is so much cooler than the rest. She carries her 5'9" rockstar body very nonchalantly, knows everything about T.Rex, and on top of all, the girl knows how to edit real reel tape. I am talking spinning, splicing and taping back together. Like back in the early 1980s. Before some of us were born, and when reel-to-reel tape editing was not just a form of art but also the only way to edit sound.

These days computers allow us not just to edit audio but also audiovisual material digitally. These days nobody spins, splices and tapes. These days we drag and drop, shift things back and forth with our computer mouse. These days we never have to worry about killing a bite with one rash cut.

Programs like Final Cut Pro for video or Cutmaster Pro for audio -€“ the only audio program I have ever used extensively -€“ make editing a convenient job that causes us very few worries. After a 30-minute instruction we could already create decent video bites to enhance our formerly print-only story and put it on the Web. The special skill has become a basic skill in the Stauffer Multimedia Newsroom.

If you are not taking an online-journalism class at the University of Kansas and learning how to edit there, you only need to enter "video editing" into google. And .48 seconds later a Web site called "How stuff works" educates you on the essentials of digital video editing. Ta-ta, rocket science.

I have enjoyed using Final Cut Pro with its easy menu and drag-and-drop system. As opposed to iMovie or already outdated audio programs like Cutmaster Pro, Final Cut is easy to use and for now perfectly suitable for our tasks in the newsroom.

So far, not many newsrooms have followed the online model and demanded video editing skills from their employees. But I predict that it won't take too long until younger editors realize that in our converged newsosphere, digital editing skills can be as easily acquired and required as a decent sense of grammar.

Is that a good thing? Probably, but journalists have to make sure that all the easy editing won't push aside the fact that video still needs to be shot well. Otherwise, even a skilled editor will have trouble putting together a quality bite.

People like my friend Anke, however, will always stand out from the crowd. While the whole news world may soon be able to quickly piece together a digital video package, she will remain one of the chosen few who can splice and tape back together and, while doing it, look so much cooler than the digital rest of us.

The only thing better than making a wish list is making a wish list to be purchased with someone else's money. I better get this out in the open right now: I am a tech-head. When someone asks me what to buy in the tech world, I get a bit weak in the knees. But when Uncle Rick asked me about cell phone cameras, I just didn't feel that oomph that I get from, say, a TiVo purchase or a stand-alone digital camera.

That said, the idea of an all-in-one device -€“ mp3 player, cell phone, digital still/video camera, and pda -€“ is very appealing. I just haven't seen anything yet that really impresses me. The new Rokr phone, also known as the Itunes phone, is nowhere near worth running out to buy. Sure, it is cool that you can answer a call while listening to your music. But there are many points that I see as very "uncool".

You have to wear those stupid earbuds that also have a dangling microphone on them and the device only holds 100 songs. For those of us with sizeable digital music collections (I am holding strong at 25,000-plus mp3s) narrowing that down to 100 songs to take with you hardly seems feasible, let alone worthy of the expense. Not to mention the "sort of" bluetooth technology that works for voice, but does not work for the music.

Of most interest to journalists, the camera of the Rokr seems pretty good and does shoot both stills and video. But if you are listening to your music and then the phone rings, how are you supposed to use the camera at the same time? Can you manage to get the shot without getting tangled up in the headphones?

I'm not saying I need all of my music with me at all times, or need to use all of my technology simultaneously, but we have the technology, so why not use it? There are other phones out there that can hold as many as 1,000 songs. For you mac-ers or mac-ees or whatever you call yourselves, no, they don't have the intrepid design of the Itunes phone. Call me crazy, but I would rather have my choice of 10 times the music than the rather boring layout of the Ipod. I would rather a company give me far too many options than a half-assed attempt at ingenuity. No, seriously, call me crazy. I dare you.

I was responsible for covering Phi Kappa Theta fraternity getting expelled from the University last semester. Editors at the University Daily Kansan told me to snap a shot of a breaking news event via a cell phone if I witnessed it happening.

The first thing I thought to myself was, "I don't even have a cell phone that takes pictures!"

Technologies such as the camera cell phone, i-pods and tiny Coolpix digital cameras are taking over visual journalism and society needs to realize it.

Pictures like this were taken from a citizen journalist witnessing the tragic events of 9/11 from a nearby location. The picture is on yahoo, but originally credited to a Tennessee citizen's blog.

Recent events like the disasters caused by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita still had effective pictures taken by visual journalists employed by newspapers. But this was only because the aftermath and destruction of the hurricanes was extensive. The effects of 9/11 were extensive as well, but the "money shot" of the terrorists' airplane was instant. It would be unrealistic to ask photographers to constantly be live on the scene when "money shots" occur -€“ this is too instant a process.

If a publication or TV Station doesn't want to get scooped on money shots, load up the multimedia newsroom with as many Coolpix cameras and i-pods as the budget allows.

It's also just a matter of time until Kansas implements mandatory requirements for undergrads in the J-School. I mentioned Missouri requiring its J-School undergrads to have laptops in my last blog. Perhaps future Kansas students taking advanced reporting will be required to carry picture cell phones.

Just about once a week, I make a call to Jonathan Kealing up at the newsroom about something I've seen or noticed around town that may be newsworthy. It could be the first time I saw a gas station that went over $3 a gallon or when I saw a man in a bunny costume running around the library. Just something that you can't see on a newsroom board or hear on the police scanner. What I would have given to have been able to take a quick picture of what I saw and send it instantly to Kealing, seeing if he wanted to run it at the last minute or as some means to fill space in his paper. That's why I think every reporter for KUJH and the Kansan should have a Motorola RAZR v3x.

Now, I'm sure this sounds excessive and that I'm just trying to get free cell phones for students. But hear me out. They have 2 mega-pixel cameras built in to them with 8x zoom, which from what I understand is more than enough to produce a newspaper or internet quality picture. Also, they have two-way video calling which means I could witness something, record it and send it to the newsroom in the matter of a minute or so. How great would this be for reporters writing on deadlines if they could literally send in their work right after it happened instead of having to drive back to campus, find a parking spot (which may be the worst part about the whole current state of being a reporter), trudge up a hill in the rain to the newsroom and then have to find one of the few computers that actually work and aren't occupied? This makes it all easier. If these phones were leased out to reporters every semester (where the student agrees to pay most of the bill), reporting would be a whole lot more efficient. Plus, it would keep us editors happy, knowing that we could track down our sometimes-delinquent reporters more easily.

I know this sounds far-fetched. I don't expect it to ever happen. But there is something to be said about instilling a more citizen-journalist mindset into our reporters. So often people in the newsroom are asking about story ideas. Where can we find fresh ideas? Where is news happening? What is newsworthy? Of course those questions are coming up. My answer is: You're sitting in a newsroom, for crying out loud. Get out. See what's happening.

And I think that equipping our reporters with something like the RAZR would give them an awful lot of incentive to take their journalism to the streets and avoid getting story ideas from press releases and police scanners.

Why is it that most of my posts center around technical "issues" in the newsroom. Could it be that it's my job to manage these things?

First, the TV web server was hacked this summer. Then, eHub starting choking on the WordPress databases...

Today, I am happy to report that we have survived yet another technical fiasco. Last Thursday, we needed to restore the story table for the TV web site. We had accidentally written over all the stories in the DB — every single story — with one story, Psychologists blame parents for college stress. Ironic? For a period of about 24 hours, we had nothing on the web site but this lone story, repeated in top news, producer's choice, and pretty much all over the site. After many phone calls, and backing and forthing with the campus academic computing services and the database Staci Wolfe, we finally got our data restored. Just in time to post Friday's newscast.

Katie worked her butt off, even stayed late on Friday to make sure everything was working. We're lucky to have Katie, she's smart as a whip and dedicated too. She's a Geek Goddess.

The lesson in all this is that we can't live without technological people. It's a terrible cliche, but oh so true — technology: can't live with it; can't live without it. Ignorance is not an option. It's job security for me and Katie; but someday, someday, I would like to be able to take a day off without my cell phone ringing with yet another technical issue.

It has been a long weekend for multimedia newsroom alum Meagan Kelleher in Lake Charles, La. She's been through the worst of Hurricane Rita while working as the web director at Channel 7. Here's her update for those who have been following the storm. I have left in her shorthand. Adds to the feel :

Been in Christus St. Pat hospital since Wed. or Thur. before storm hit. Our station has set up here with a bare bones broadcast that we also streamed over the web. We are still here today (Saturday), but might move back to station today. During the storm was surreal, some of the loudest noises I have ever heard. We have one computer with one airport card, that is the only thing keeping us going on the web. We have gotten over 1,000 emails on our ritakplc@gmail.com account from people all over the world. Brazil, London, Japan, Canda and France are just some places that have been watching our broadcast. My aparment is ok, no damage, but I can't say that for all employees. So much of the city is flooded, there are downed trees everywhere, all the bayous have risen above the bridges. My cell phone broke, so I have no contact with anyone except borrowing people's phones to call my parents. People won't be back into town for another 7 to 10 days, and we won't have electricity for maybe even longer. We all feel really gross, obviously haven't showered since Thursday. Since we don't have chryon operations we have been writing everything on paper and putting them in plastic placards then zooming in on it. We have one stick mic and one camera, and no air conditioning. Sleeping on the tile floor is not fun, because everything is damp. I am so incredibly proud of everything that KPLC has done for the people of Southwest Louisiana. I am glad I got to be a part of it. It was the most challenging, scary, fun, depressing and rewarding experience I have ever had. Meagan

The world of journalism is changing. The Internet. Blogs. Citizen Journalism. They're all changing the way people get their news and the way I'm supposed to give it to them.

Big whoop.

It's easy as a soon-to-be journalism graduate to be afraid of how the industry is changing. What good is it to invest so much of my time and my parents' money in a college education when I'm going to have to learn all this new stuff after graduating anyways? Am I really just paying for that piece of paper that allows me to write "bachelor's of science in journalism" on my resume'?

But c'mon. Am I only one not that scared by about all of this ballyhoo of a new, emerging media landscape? Media convergence? Sounds like fun. Blogging? Bring it on. I know I haven't been around for that long, but when has the world of journalism not been changing? Dan Rather, although he laments to see some things change, sees it too. I'm usually one to avoid cliche', but the more things change, the more they stay the same.

What I'm getting for my tuition is, ideally, the same I would have been getting 30 years ago. I'm not here to learn how to use WordPress as much I am here to learn how to write. I'm not here to learn how to use InDesign as much as I am here to learn what makes a good magazine page layout. While the medium may change, the basic elements of educating an intelligent, insightful, talented journalist stay the same. Great research skills. Great writing skills. A dedication to honesty and truth. These are the guiding forces of what made a good journalist 30 years ago, what makes one today and what will make one 30 years from now.

As long as journalism schools resist the temptation to focus more on the changing medium and adhere to focusing on those basic tenets of journalism, they will definitely be around in 20 years. In fact, I think it is the very change in media -€“ from radio to television to internet and beyond -€“ that keeps young people interested in journalism. As the number of media outlets expands, so too will the amount of people willing and capable of being good journalists.

Sure, we won't be using these then-obsolete programs like Final Cut or InDesign. Hell, by that time, we may not even be printing a newspaper. (It could all be online by then.) But people are going to need to be taught how to write well, to research even better and to do it in an ethical manner.

A few years back, my Dad taught computer class in middle school. This in itself does not sound like an earth-shattering event -€“ or even something I'd start a blog about.

But really, it has significance when you think about it.

Think of my father growing up in the 1960s. Going through middle school and high school, he would be asked like all kids are what he wanted to be when he grew up.

And, like a lot of kids, he would answer, "A teacher."

"That's great, Dennis," the person would say. "What are you going to teach?"

At this point, my Dad would have had no way of knowing the correct answer. Part of what he would teach -€“ the personal computer -€“ was not invented yet, and wouldn't be for a few more years.

As much as he wanted to plan for his future -€” trying to mold it and shape it and make it exactly what he wanted it to be -€“ he still could not. In a sense, his career path did not dictate what technology he was going to use; rather, the technology dictated his career path.

That's what's so unsettling for me as a journalist right now. I am standing at the same place that my father was.

It sounds great to say that I am a journalism major. It sounds, at least, like I have everything planned out.

"I'm going to be a sports journalist," I say, smiling to everyone who asks.

But then, inevitably, the next question arises: "What are you going to do as a sports journalist?"

And I hesitate. I want to give an answer but can't. Will I decide my future job, or will the technology decide for me? Right now, it's just too early to tell.

The Carnegie-Knight Commission believes that journalism schools are doing their best to educate students, but say that those schools' "best is not good enough in this complex day and age." But what more can J-schools do? Without a certifiable crystal ball, it's hard to know what to teach -€“ or even how to teach it -€” when the future of journalism is so uncertain. My Dad couldn't be taught computers in high school; so, who knows if the technology I will work with has even been created yet?

For now, I will keep on blogging. It's the only thing I can do. This may or may not be the future of journalism.

But I've at least got to try.

Like my father, I know inexactly what I want to be. Where the future -€” and technology -€” will take me is both unknown and unnerving.

Guess I'm just along for the ride.

Kevin Sites just made my day. Not just because he has such strong, well-defined arms, but because his biography reaffirmed the mantra I sing to myself every morning: Ain't nuthin like a good journalism education. Sites, our latest online-journalism celebrity, has one, too. To be exact, he earned a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University.

Sure, $30,000 could buy you a lot of instant gratification, but investing in an academic journalist education can't be such a bad idea, even -€“ or especially? -€“ in our rapidly changing media world.

Reporters will always need interviewing skills and the ability to step outside their comfort zone when calling a source 20 times a day to ask uncomfortable questions. They, as well as their editors, still need to be excellent writers with a good sense of style and grammar. The same goes for public relations, marketing and advertising students. Yes, you can learn writing or the basics of media law on the job, but those few hundred dollars you spent on an ethics, writing or marketing class will likely prove well spent.

Even the most thoroughly planned college education, however, needs input from professors and on-campus speakers from the professional world. They have to make sure that students quickly become savvy with the Web as this new medium is no longer all that new and has become an essential news, entertainment and research medium.

I think in that respect the University still has to catch up. We need more than one online-journalism class. We need more than one Internet-savvy professor and two genius HTML assistants. And we need more knowledge on the legal and ethical framework of online reporting and research. Talking about Kevin Sites seems a step in the right direction. Reading the paper and learning about the recent trends in online marketing research another.

Regardless of how much our media system will have changed by 2025, journalists need essential skills such as objectivity, accuracy and creativity, and a journalism school remains among the best places to acquire those skills. Faculty, however, shares the responsibility to develop a curriculum that helps students figure out their goals and eventually achieve them. Online media literacy will definitely be an essential part of a multi-facetted, valuable academic education. Students, however, have to make sure that they get the skills they need in today's converged media world.

This email came in this morning from former class member and station internet director at Channel 7 in Lake Charles, La., Meagan Kelleher. She has, in the short time she has been there, done some pretty amazing things with blogs on the station's web site. Her note makes for riveting reading for blogophiles. Read on:

Thought I'd drop you a note to let you know how things are in Lake Charles with Rita and all. Right now we are just watching and waiting to see how the storm is going to affect us. One of our meteorologists here thinks it still might make a little bit more of a northern turn, sending Rita back our way. Even if it does stay on track right for Galveston we will likely feel 60+ mph winds, some rain and some tornadoes. If by tomorrow afternoon/evening we decide that the storm is going to affect us even more than that, we move into the 911 building (where FEMA is located here) and do our broadcasts from there, because the tower that sits on top of our building could collapse if there is a strong enough wind gust. We have the building wired to do live broadcasts there and I'll have a laptop to keep the site updated. We are anticipating that if for any reason that we lose our TV signal that the website will be our main focus. We set up live streaming capabilities too, so if we decide to go wall to wall coverage, we can pop that up on the site. You wouldn't believe the response to the weather blog. People turn to that more often than they do the actual newscasts. Today alone it got probably 30 comments with people asking questions and conversing about the storm. I'm really proud of that lil' blog! If Rita stays on track to Galveston, that still puts Southwest Louisiana on the right side of the storm, which was where Biloxi was with Katrina, and they are 200 miles away from New Orleans. We are about 150 miles away from Galveston. People are concerned, naturally. I went to WalMart and Target today to buy a battery powered lantern and they were all sold out, and all the batteries in town were sold out as well (I eventually found one. My hurricane kit is complete). People are buying massive amounts of food and water, and the home improvement stores have been selling a lot of boards. Schools and colleges are closed here for the rest of the week, and half of Calacasieu Parish (where Lake Charles is) has an evacuation order, but that is only for the southern part of the parish, not where I am. Gov. Blanco was here today as well. Tomorrow morning I am going on the Sunrise show to guide people through the website, and I'll be doing that again on our noon show. I snatched a block of HTML from a sister station's website and created our hurricane center on the homepage. If the worst happens we are dropping the entire current homepage and replacing it with a blog style update format, similar to WWL-TV in New Orleans. As much as a hit to Lake Charles would be terrible, I would like to see how I'd be able to handle a complete re-design like that on the fly. If nothing else, Katrina has definitely prepared me more than anything for this situation. I know exactly what worked and didn't work for other websites, and other people are starting to see the importance of an updated website as a source for information in addition to the television, not just an after thought. I'll keep you guys updated, I'm sure I'll have more tales once the storm passes through. Meagan

This summer, my Temple had a social gathering for college students at a Dallas Starbucks. The entire night, I was so proud to tell people I studied journalism at the University of Kansas. Then, I talked to a freshman who said he would study journalism at Missouri this year (I know, boo for Missouri, but I've heard great things about its journalism school).

He said that starting this year, it would be mandatory at Missouri for journalism undergraduates to have a laptop.

This boggled my mind. But just because technology is advancing, does that mean journalism schools should alter their curriculum to conform to technology? I'm here to say it shouldn't.

We should be getting exactly what we're getting now for a $30,000 journalism school education at Kansas. Technology is advancing, but it's also constantly changing. Kansas would have to change its identity on a yearly basis if it changes with technology advances. What if the technologies fail? That's why new classes are offered for the changing, but proven technology of our time. That's why we're in this class. This doesn't happen every year though. It's one thing to upgrade programs and get new computers. It's another thing to change the teaching on what makes news, for example.

The elements of news are concepts that were taught since Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1450's. I took Research and Writing last year and learned the TIPCUP (timeliness, impact, proximity, conflict, unusual, prominence) acronym. If a fraternity gets kicked off campus, it's news now and will still be news 20 years from now.

I can tell everyone from experience that a journalism school education will gain students more than just training and documentation for a resume. I worked for an executive search firm this summer as an intern, in large part because of my involvement with the J-School at Kansas. The job was off the path of journalism, but involved many skills I learned in Lawrence, such as interviewing on the phone, computer skills and working in a professional atmosphere. Even though it was an internship, I'd like to think that a journalism school education can take individuals to jobs in journalism or other areas of expertise.

I look forward to 20 years from now when I revisit the University. Although it will likely have updated computers and programming equipment, Research and Writing classes will still be learning about TIPCUP.

I am growing increasingly aware that my perspective on journalism education is far different from that of my classmates. I entered the graduate program at KU so that I might study why journalists do what they do, both good and bad. I came here thinking that I would be among a community of scholars that wants to think about what we are doing as journalists. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that just isn't happening here.

I didn't come here to be taught how to be a journalist. Personally, I don't think that requires much training. I guess the only training I think you need to be a journalist is complete when someone hands you a pad of paper (or a digital camera or a digital recorder) and says, "Go find out what happened!" The rest is interdisciplinary.

You need to be a good writer, you need to take good pictures, you need computer skills, you need to be able to think on your feet, and you need to have an ethical frame of reference that recognizes the duty that journalists have in society, not a re-hash of Aristotle. Journalists are no less important than lawyers, yet are far less revered. I happen to think they are more important. Lawyers do not control the public's perception of the world around them; journalists do. This is an awesome power that needs to be recognized and contemplated.

My classmates, at least in open discussion, do not do that.

They want job skills.

They are here to learn how to be journalists.

They are here to make good grades.

This is a problem.

This is not going to be the most popular blog entry of the week. People are going to be angry about this. I can see it now: "How dare you tell me what I am thinking?" "Who are you to sit in judgment of journalists?" I am a citizen. That should be enough. Moreover, I am a citizen in their midst. I am simply finding out what is happening. I am a journalist.

The future of journalism education is bleak unless we start talking about our impact in a serious manner. Let's start today. Leave me a comment.

Do you have a cell phone with picture taking capabilities, an ipod or a digital camera? If you do, you'd better jump on the citizen journalist train, because it's about to really pick up speed. If you don't have one of these electronic devices, get one, and try to catch the caboose as it comes by.

With the continual updates of all of these digitally advanced devices, the opportunity to be a citizen journalist has increased drastically and won't let up soon. For instance, look at the man who took a picture of the subway bombings in London a few months ago and found the picture from his cell phone all over the news. News agencies are going to start to take advantage of this increasing aid in the media spectrum. Look no further than Hurricane Katrina, where many pictures have come from those directly affected by the disaster.

Why the hell do these news agencies need to pay photographers to be ready at all times when all they have to do is sit back, relax and wait for another picture or video to come in from a cell phone, ipod or digital camera from another no name off of the street?

In 15 years, news organizations will have only one photographer on staff for feature stories only. They will receive the rest of their pictures and video from people off of the street with some electronic devices not even fathomed yet. The only problem is that these people will no longer be considered citizen journalists, because they will have these news organizations in the palms of their hands, bidding for the prime photo. Yes, citizen journalism will be no more. These so-called citizen journalists will be getting paid for the photos and video they took because they were cruising in the right place at the right time. People will be making a living off of car accidents, robberies and natural disasters to name a few.

So while citizen journalism continues to evolve and the train continues to pick up speed, jump on now. Or hell, just wait for a few years when I promise it will really pay off. By that time, "citizen journalism" will be no more and twisted-metal-and flashing-red-light-chasing citizen freelancers will be holding several crisp Benjamin Franklin's for the "money shot"they just took and sold right off the street to the desperate news organizations looking for the next "real news" fix.

I wish I had a title. Something in front of my name that would make me feel incredibly important, even if no one knew exactly what it meant. Something like "Citizen Journalist"?

People who voluntarily contribute to news production -€“ certainly not a new phenomenon. But with the subway bombings in London or Hurricane Katrina, citizen journalism has been declared the new big thing.

Recently, news organizations have reached out to their audiences for reader- or viewer-gathered material. This amateur footage or copy can be more useful than the material from professional reporters because it comes straight from eyewitnesses. It also gives stories that personal touch that sells so well; and, above all, it is cheap.

With Katrina, citizen journalism has reached its temporary peak. Even the stuff that doesn't end up on TV or the Web can still be easily published on private Web sites. With personal blogs, the omnipresence of digital cameras and picture-taking cell phones we can suddenly all be journalists. But hasn't that always been the case?

Journalists are not doctors or lawyers. While a degree in journalism certainly helps prepare students for the complex issues in the professional world, a degree is not a certification required to call someone a journalist. Degree holders do, however, acquire skills in reporting, production or media law that the man on the street usually doesn't possess.

In 10 years, the citizen-journalist label will have disappeared. With the constant progress in communication technology and an increase of rules and regulations in the digital world, citizen journalism will undergo the same evolution as professional journalism. Only the most skilled citizen journalists will succeed. Some of them will probably even enter the official journalist workforce.

One of the most popular examples is Anderson Cooper, who started out reporting with a fake press pass and a home camcorder and is now one of the most intriguing faces on CNN. Another, less famous citizen journalist is Dhar Jamail. Unsatisfied with the U.S. news coverage of the Iraq War, he traveled there and became an independent war correspondent. But when alternative media outlets picked up his stories, the line between professional and citizen journalism blurred. As with most every form of media content, it is now up to us consumers and producers to weed out quality reporters from the dilettante posters. Because, as much as I'd like it, I will never be PrDCJ (Professor Doctor of Citizen Journalism) Suse Whatever-her-weird-last-name-is.

The idea of a "citizen journalist" is nothing new. The term itself and the increasing willingness by media outlets to use their work is simply a recent development in a long line of changes brought on by increasingly sophisitcated consumer electronics.

This is not much different than it was in say...1991. I'm old enough to remember watching the Rodney King beating being broadcast over and over and over on television. The footage was not that of a professional news crew but of an average citizen from Los Angeles who just happened to live on the street that King was pulled over on. The video and the subsequent trial galvanized the country and brought the citizen journalist into the spotlight.

Everyone wants to tell a story. Right now, there is more information available on the Internet than you could digest in a lifetime. A lot of it is the work of these so-called journalists. Some of it is credible written information that they back up with facts and supplement with other types of media. This defines a citizen journalist.

A lot of the information is also garbage. It's either fabrication or the work of bloggers. Bloggers are the modern equivilant of 20th century short-wave radio operators. For the most part, they post useless information about themselves and broadcast it to anyone who wants to receive it. They're playing a game that's been being played for years. The same can be said for citizen journalists; they're just in a more respectable league.

Right now, news organizations are relying more and more on the work of private individuals who send in the pictures they took on their cell phones. The advancement of technology and the widespread availability of that technology gives just about anyone the ability to become a "reporter." Just call in your news report on your cell, take a picture with that same phone and send it to a media outlet.

The technology is getting smaller, but the "citizen journalist" is nothing new. The more portable and the cheaper the technology becomes, the more widespread citizen journalism will become. That is, until someone gets a major media outlet sued and messes it up for everyone.

If I were asked to list five characteristics that described a good journalist, my list would probably include objective, accurate, accountable, thorough and ethical. I think these are all reasonable things that we can, and should, expect from the people who feed us our news.

Why do we hold journalists to such high standards? It is because we rely on them. We rely on them to keep us informed, to be our watchdog, and to be responsible gatekeepers.

The evolution of citizen journalism is something that I think may jeopardize those standards. Having an average Joe off the street suddenly calling himself a journalist because he snapped a picture with his cellular phone makes me a little uneasy. The main reason? There is no accountability. Who is this new citizen journalist accountable to?

What happens if a citizen journalist gets a hot scoop unethical practices? What happens when a citizen photojournalist doctors a photograph before sending it to the papers? We can't punish, suspend, withold pay, or even fire a citizen journalist. When something goes wrong, the publisher or the station manager has to deal with the mess.

And this is why I am so surprised that traditional news outlets are calling for citizen journalists. In an age when people are suing each other left and right, I am surprised that theses organizations want to take on that sort of legal exposure. If a citizen journalist commits libel, the paper is just as responsible for damages as the citizen journalist, who probably isn't worth a trial lawyer's time.

I was encouraged, however, when I came upon the Blogger's Code of Ethics. The code very closely mimics the Society of Professional Journalists code. The blogger code includes guidelines such as being honest and fair, minimizing harm and being accountable. This gives me hope that there may be a citizen journalist code of ethics, as well as other guidelines, that will make these journalists-in -the-raw accountable to the public they serve.

I love catch phrases, especially when the mainstream media (MSM) gets a hold on them. (Do we smell the fetid stench of sarcasm?) In the never-ending quest to capture the life force of anything that seems to actually be thriving, the MSM has landed upon the Citizen Journalist. It isn't just MSNBC that is trying to catch the authenticity of the eyewitness news. Hell, many local newscasts are called Eyewitness News.

The problem is, eyewitness news is hardly reliable. Defense attorneys and psychologists are the first to tell you that you cannot rely on what a person thought they saw. Entire academic departments are dedicated to the study of false memory. So what are these major media outlets doing trolling for citizen reports? My best guess is that they just want your pictures. Well, that, and they want you to feel empowered. Don't let all this power go to your head. You citizen journalists aren't bloggers.

Bloggers are the hyenas nipping at the heels of the lionized MSM. While there can be overlap in the two groups, generally speaking citizen journalists are eyewitnesses to breaking news stories that phone or email their stories in to the MSM. Bloggers, whose definition is a bit more mottled, generally do the writing themselves and have editorial and creative control over their content. If anything forecasts the future of journalism, the decentralization of the blogosphere might be it.

In 2015, the mythical date when all things will be revealed, my money is on things being largely the same. The Internet will continue to leech viewers while television news will have devolved into a complete punditocracy. But we can see that already from the vantage point of 2005. Ten years from now, we will see the tipping point. Can you guess which way it is going to tip? Your guess is as good as mine. Tell me which direction you think things will fall.

I could be a blogger. I have stories and columns I've researched and written for the University Daily Kansan. That's not so scary. But. a 12-year old kid by the name of Alex having a blog since the time he was nine years old - that is scary. (Feel free to e-mail your comments about the NBA to him.)

Location is what comes to mind when I think about the differences between bloggers and citizen journalists. Bloggers don't have to be anywhere in particular to post a blog. With less journalism schooling than reporters, citizen journalists better be on the scene of the crime.

When I think of a citizen journalist, instant breaking news comes to mind. I think of a citizen journalist as witnessing Hurricane Katrina and taking a cell phone picture to have as evidence, for example.

I see bloggers in a much more secondary setting, like a home.

They could be the people who did not necessarily witness Hurricane Katrina or 9/11, but still posted their thoughts to the Web on the topic(s). They could also be Alex.

Many bloggers create profiles that tell people more than just age and gender. Profiles could have links to personal diaries such as xanga, which classes the person is enrolled, relationship status, phone numbers and addresses. These people might as well give their social security numbers out while they're at it.

Citizen journalism is more concrete. Someone is witnessing an event unfold.

But should it even be given this name? Mike Gordon of the Poynter Institute said citizen journalism is a bad label and implies that journalists are different than humans.

"'Personal journalism' is probably a more accurate description of the types of content most of its practitioners are creating at this point," Gordon said.

This led me to think of reasons why anyone would want to be a citizen journalist. I doubt they report on breaking news stories because they would like the experience. They likely ran into a situation by sheer coincidence or personally witnessed something unusual happening.

Yahoo recently hired Weblog journalist Kevin Sites to compete with mainstream media outlets on breaking news. He will report exclusively for yahoo - but he is not a citizen journalist. Although he reports by himself, he is a multimedia reporter paid by yahoo. It's his job.

This is why the same skills that define a journalist today will also define a journalist in 2015. Today, a journalist is taught to be fair, accurate, a beige narrator, objective and skeptical. A journalist is taught to report the news and give each or as many sides as possible a voice in the story. This will hold true in 2015. The media will still exist in the form of newspapers. Citizen journalism will not be prevalent because people will simply be too lazy to report breaking news stories if it's not their job or if they are not personally there when it happens.

So read up about Alex's opinions on the NBA in his blog, but realize that a citizen journalist would actually have attended all the games.

I always laughed at the idea that was thrown at me in my introductory Journalism 415 class. Thing is, I'm not so sure it's funny any more.

Whenever we encountered a problem in our stories, or whenever we were stuck in the creation portion of our stories, Uncle Rick and Aunt Patty would always preach to us to use our "journalism license."

It always made me laugh because it was such a silly concept. I was a journalist, period. No questions asked. It was just something I was, someone I had become through experience. Needing a journalism license for me was like asking George Brett to step out of the batter's box to make him confirm he was a baseball player, or having Beethoven stop playing to make sure he had the required number of piano lessons as a child to be qualified to play the instrument in front of a crowd.

As silly as the concept seemed, I almost find myself wishing for such certification now.

With the online media changing so much, it seems everyone now has obtained a "journalism license," meaning the one I have in my pocket doesn't have so much meaning any more. Juggling eight fiery torches is only impressive if everyone else CANNOT juggle eight fiery torches. Right now, I'm not sure everyone can, but all these "bloggers" and "citizen journalists" are at least giving it a try -- and making some out there believe (like Michael Feldman from Harvard) that their journalism license is just as good as the one I've had for years.

So what is the difference between a simple "blogger" and "citizen journalist"? Dan Gillmor says citizen journalists should have to take pledges to report fairly. I like the idea of citizen journalists at least understanding the great responsibility they are taking on, but I just cannot for the life of me picture any serious human being raising his/her right hand before the computer screen to promise to always report fair and unbiased stories.

We must also ask the difference between a citizen journalist and a journalist -- or if there is a difference. I'd like to think there is a credibility issue -- that my license is class A while the citizen journalist's is more of a learner's permit -- but the online community seems to be increasingly less concerned with how long you've driven and more nterested that you can simply drive -€” with the pedal to the metal.

There is no doubt bloggers and citizen journalists are having an increasing impact on our society. Last year, columnist Steve Rubel even pushed for Bloggers becoming Time Magazine's person of the year.

As for me, I'm stuck with simply knowing, deep in my heart (though I sometimes can't prove it), that I was, am, and probably always will be a journalist. I can only hope, that in 2015, this will still mean something. Even if, by then, my journalism license will look the same as everyone else's.

Dan Gillmor, a former technology editor for the San Jose Mercury-News and Bayosphere creator, has to be one of the biggest proponents of citizen journalism I've read. He defines citizen journalism as the "notion that we're moving away from the lecture mode of journalism-€”the one-to-many manufacturing process that gained sway in the last century-€”to something radically less centralized and more democratic-€¦"

Now that's a sweet, little picture of citizen journalism he paints. Bottom-up journalism is another name for it. He even used the magic word: democratic. In its ideal form, citizen journalism is just that - democratic. It encourages active participation from both senders and receivers of information. And its ultimate goal is to make things better. Citizens taking pictures of the London bus bombings with their cell phones and posting them for the public to see is a perfect example of citizen journalism.

Blogging, however, I think needs be defined a bit differently. If citizen journalism is regular folks getting involved with the reporting of news, blogging is regular folks taking it upon themselves to produce their own editorial pages. Example: What I'm doing right now. As I blog, I'm not really reporting anything newsworthy. I'm doing the same thing that Frank Rich or Paul Krugman does twice a week for the New York Times. (Although I'd like to think I do it a little better.)

It's hard to say what will define a journalist in 2015, seeing as how I really can't define what a journalist is now. I've always thought that a journalist is someone who works in the news-gathering business. I guess I have to amend that now to someone who gathers news and shares it, regardless of whether they do it as a job.

But that bothers me. Do we really want to be getting our information from these people? The people who haven't taken a reporting class in their lives? The people who have nothing to lose if they're wrong? The people who don't have to adhere to industry standards of ethics and decision-making?

Color me traditional, but those are attributes of a news source that should never be taken for granted. Blogs are great as what they are. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here. Save their ability to publish information for public consumption, they lack a lot of what it really takes to make journalism.

I have a confession to make. As a sports fan, I cannot stand sports-talk radio.

Now I do listen to it occasionally. And I do know that with my journalism degree there is a slight (tiny, miniscule) chance that someday my job might be working for the airwaves instead of the newstands.

Still, there has always been one thing I have loved about newspaper journalism -- something that makes it different from the schock jocks and big heads of sports-talk radio.

Newspaper is permanent. The words are in print. They don't go away.

It seems radio's words all too often disappear.

And, to me, this is a problem. I can only stand sports-talk radio so long because only partial effort is taken to report the facts. Most know that information -- correct, fact-based information -- is less important than saying something controversial and entertaining, making your listeners either scream in agreement or call in anger. Those in sports-talk radio are more successful by building themselves than actually presenting well-thought out opinions based on research.

And if something is wrong, there's almost no punishment because we forget so fast. The words don't stay around. People don't fact-check (or at least as much) because the words automatically disappear.

With newspaper, your word is your bond. It's all you have. And if you mess up, people can bring up your mistake five minutes or five years later because it doesn't immediately go away.

Because of this, I still (like Steven Johnson) refuse to believe that blogs will someday replace all journalism (an argument partially made by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, who says journalism will change to "an activity, rather than a profession"). To me (and Angelo Bruscas), blogs are like sports-talk radio gone wild -- or sports-talk radio gone permanent.

Now, not only will controversial opinions and unchecked facts be brought to you via Internet, it will also be brought in print form so you can re-read it in the future. In short, the incorrect stuff won't go away like it often does in radio.

Of course there will be exceptions. There are credible sports-talk radio hosts, and already there are credible bloggers.

But how are we supposed to know the difference? And who takes the time these days to actually research the difference?

Not many.

What scares me most is that there even is discussion that someday people might replace newspapers with blogs.

Here's an excerpt from one sports blog, courtesy Bruscas' article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Most football jocks are retards when it comes to real life. they get handed down privileges (sic) and benefits that ordinary students in the same school cannot have while real students work hard ... just to graduate. jocks aren't that bright.

If this is the future of blogs, then I'm not sure we'll be so bright either. Especially if we allow ourselves to replace journalism with writing like this.

That's why I'll stick to my newspaper -- for both reading and writing. I just hope the future will allow me to.

As a freshman, I picked up my first University Daily Kansan and went straight to the sports page. Sports writers made predictions on week one winners and losers for the 2002 college football season. I wanted to do that.

Obviously, this was more than about making football predictions. I grew up breathing the summer air of Arlington, Texas, at Rangers baseball games with my brother. I grew up in Plano, Texas, where football was not like Friday Night Lights, but pretty close.

I chose Kansas for its reputation as an outstanding journalism school. So I got started, covering the golf team and the housing and greek life beat. Before I knew it, my title was associate sports editor and, yes -€“ I got to make predictions on college football games.

But now, a red flag waves in the back of my mind. Will newspapers be the same when I leave school and enter the job market? Should I stop pursuing a career in an area with so many unknown answers about its future?

I don't see journalism graduates earning a required living in the blogosphere until at least 10 years from now. Evidence indicated it could be sooner though.

According to sifry.com, the blogosphere is doubling in size once every five months. The Web site cited technocrati, an online Web tracker, as tracking 7.8 million blogs in February 2005, compared to 1 million blogs in November 2003.

The main problem with the blogosphere right now is its credibility. Apparent survivors of Hurricane Katrina posted blogs into cyberspace. Are these real survivors? Possibly.

The mere fact that we talked about the legitimacy of these blogs in class should secure a J-school graduate a newspaper job in the next five years. For blogs to take the place of newspapers, they must report and source their stories.

This may not be too far from happening. Blogs have the capability of providing their viewers with instant, up-to-the-second news. Newspapers must wait a day before releasing breaking news stories. Theoretically, blogs could have newspapers beat on every breaking news story.

According to an April 15, 2004 article from Christian Science Monitor, Rebecca Blood, in The Weblog Handbook, said that the credibility is still almost entirely with newspapers though.

"The form [of a blog] is new entry on top-€¦but that doesn't provide the kind of story -€˜weighting' that a newspaper or magazine provides, when it arranges stories according to their importance, using headlines and placement on the page as signals," Blood said.

As long as newspapers keep their credibility above blogs, they will stay in business. I'm glad that I'm taking Journalism 694 so I can be prepared either way though.

I'll admit the New Orleans blog or the "Interdictor" in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was interesting. But in saying this, I'll put out a disclaimer to all current and future journalism students: You better stick to newspapers, television news and the internet news because blogs are not the future.

Anyone can have a blog. Hell, my 10-year- old brother could start a blog if he wished. Man, would that be scary. For this reason, these blogs, the future of journalism some say, fail in the credibility department. Promoting the use of blogs for Americans to get their news is also promoting the reporting of false news.

If some people know that blogs are read for news by many, what will stop them from creating stories or news that will attract the "comments", if you will. This is what I am afraid of. People will exploit these blogs and news seekers will have no idea what is valid or bogus.

Yes, blogs may begin appearing more often on some major news websites. But aren't many of these just newspaper editorials? Being a blogger is almost like being a columnist and, in the present and the foreseeable future, many more Americans will pick up the New York Times or the Washington Post, before they will click on some random website containing Tom Smith's journal.

Let's move on.

As for how I would make money off of a blog -- wait a minute. I don't have to worry about how I would make money from a blog, because I don't see them garnering much of America's attention anytime soon. Apparently, this Microsoft Word program doesn't either, because a red squiggly line sits under the word "blog" in every one of its appearances throughout this blog entry. That would mean Microsoft programmers don't even consider "blog" a word in the English language.

I happened to be passing by the HR department (read: the web site creator's basement) for www.blogsaresocool.com to see if they were hiring.

No one was in the "office", so I took it upon myself to do a little snooping. Beneath a freshly-worn pile of laundry, I found two soiled resumés marked for review to fill the web site's new writer/editor position. Here's what they looked like.

Applicant #1 Age: 23 Experience: Editor for college magazine, contributor and copy editor for college newspaper, current events radio show host for college radio station, 6 months working for a small-town newspaper as a copy editor and field reporter. Skills: Relevant coursework in reporting, editing, research. Proficient in Microsoft Office, Excel, Word, InDesign. Minimal work with HTML, WordPress. Education: Graduated with honors from the William Allen White School of journalism at the University of Kansas.

Applicant #2 Age: 21 Experience: Free-lance writer and contributor for several different internet blogs including DailyKos and Crooks and Liars. Runs personal blog in free time. Worked night shift at local television station, helping to construct station's new web site. Worked for high school yearbook and newspaper. Skills: Highly proficient in WordPress, Dreamweaver. Familiar with Mac OS, Windows XP, and Linux. Fluent in HTML language. Education: High school graduate, some community college credit hours.

Now, call me crazy, but I'd have to say applicant #2 has the edge here, and rightfully so. Hiring applicant #1 doesn't make business sense for the blog -€” which personally pisses me off given that applicant #1 is me. Let's be honest, the blog would have to waste resources and time training me with computer programs that I've never really worked with just to make me competent. Hell, I wouldn't hire me. At this point, it seems as if journalism school graduates don't have a lot of the technical training that we get in 694 (shameless plug!) and aren't be able to compete well for blog jobs.

Now, will future journalism school graduates make money on blogs? That depends. Blogs generate their revenue one of two ways. One, they allow advertisers on their sites that pay them by the user hit. Or two, they offer subscriptions.

From my personal observations, unless you are Matt Drudge, you aren't going to attract enough viewers to your site to earn a decent living with advertisers paying something like two cents per hit. But the other option might be where a j-school grad can prosper. If the quality of research and writing is good and original enough, subscribers paying a monthly rate could generate tons of money. Can that happen? Sure. It's happening already. But remember, it has to be good enough.

But I have to stick to my guns. Internet blogs have not yet nor do I think they will in the future, prove to be a big enough threat to traditional forms of journalism. The best and most stable journalism jobs will still be in newspaper, television and radio.

So I think I'll stick to my preference for resumé No. 1 for now. I think that guy still has something to offer the profession.

For my seventh birthday, I received a silver radio from my parents. You know, one of those big radios, the ones with a handle on top and the two large dials that allow you to tune and also adjust the volume with the antenna that pulls out two feet for extra reception.

I couldn't have known it at the time, but it was the best present I ever received. In fact, it's the reason I'm here right now.

To me, the device was almost magical. Through this amazing wonder of technology, I could hear my beloved Kansas City Royals play every night over every summer.

I can still remember countless evenings, staring at the two knobs while listening to the legendary Denny Matthews describing the games. It was then that I fell in love with baseball. And the truly amazing part was that the action was taking place inside a vision in my head. There was something pure about his voice, about those summer nights sitting on the porch with my father, that can't be duplicated by ESPN high definition or even the new ESPN 360. I know my children won't be able to understand.

I still have the radio. The antenna broke a long time ago. The knobs don't turn as well as they used to. But you want to know the truth? That doesn't matter any more. The radio hasn't been turned on in a long, long time.

The one constant of my childhood -€“ the very I reason I care about sports and decided to get involved in journalism -€“ now sits on a shelf in my bedroom: obsolete, outdated, never to be used again.

Denny is still calling games for the Royals -€“ his 37th season now -€“ but I am ashamed to say that even I don't listen to him any more. Now I simply check the score online, where I am given a report of every play as it happens instantaneously. And I can also check other scores, or my mail, or if I was just poked back by my best friend on the Facebook.

I guess at least I know what I'm missing. My children will never get the chance.

No, radio broadcasts are becoming a thing of the past (as Ohio State columnist Benjamin Nanamaker also points out). People don't tote around radios with handles and knobs like they used to. But then again, why should they? It's almost like choosing to take the bus when you have a 2006 Mustang sitting in front of your house.

No, if my children want sports news they will undoubtedly turn to the Internet. As is possible now, they can simply scan through and watch every baseball game on their computer screens. With ESPN 360 and other technologies on the way, highlights will be given to them via streaming video, and it will only take five minutes to see the best plays they missed from the previous day.

They will also personalize their own sports news. No more spending time having to watch an entire SportsCenter to get the sports news they want. Instead, with a click, they will retrieve what stories they want, when they want them, and go on with their day (or eBaying or Googling).

Maybe someday they will happen onto an Internet radio webcast of a baseball game. It's possible. Maybe I'll take them there one day, go to the archives and pull up Denny Matthews, attempting to give them what I once had.

But I can see the glazed looks on their faces already.

"Dad, you listened to a whole game like this?"

"No, kids," I'll say, my voice becoming softer and slower. "I listened to every game like this."

He could be just some guy, sitting in his bathrobe in front of his computer typing away.

He could be a 13-year-old geek holed up in his room creating fantasy.

Or he could be a legitimate journalist, doing in-depth reporting and breaking new stories.

Let's face it. He could be anybody, and that's what scares me about blogs. We just don't know. Blogs are raw; blogs are real; blogs are human; blogs are alive. I'll have to admit that when I first read the blog of the man holed up in a building in New Orleans, I was hooked. I liked the edginess of his writings. I liked seeing his thoughts, reading his feelings, knowing him. It gave me a sense that I was there, that I was connected to the "real thing."

After much thought and healthy conversation with friends, though, I began to doubt. I was reminded of an episode on Oprah, about pathological liars. The program featured a story about a woman who began to call into a local radio station about her "husband" who was serving in the military in Iraq. She would call the radio station weekly, sometimes daily, with elaborate stories of how her "husband" was doing and how she and her family were adjusting to life without him. She took the story all the way to his death. In the end it all turned out to be false, and the radio station along with all its listeners were made fools.

I don't want to be a fool. I want to critically look at every piece of information I receive no matter what the source. Unfortunately, not everyone has that same conviction. Many are satisfied to believe anything that they read.

Not me. I'm nobody's fool.

With bloggers such as the Poynter Institute's Jim Romenesko earning an annual salary of almost $170,000 for his efforts, it would appear that the age of blogging for a living is upon us. A media institute like Poynter seems more likely to have a celebrity blogger making six figures, but what about the idea of a patronage system like the one that supported DaVinci, Michelangelo, and the other ninja turtles during the renaissance? That is the game plan being implemented by well-known blogger Jason Kottke.

Kottke quit his job as a web designer in early 2005 as the first step in an experiment to see if he could survive on patronage alone. So far, so good. He is still at it, though he did decide to take Labor Day weekend off. Artists. I tell ya!

Another wrinkle in the future business model of blogging is the corporate blogger. This variation-on-a-flack stratagem is geared towards giving corporations a fresh face and providing key publics with timely information. As WSJ.com mentions, these bloggers don't make nearly what a celeb like Romenesko pulls down. But I must say, in the world of flackery, it seems to be the place where some heart and soul might filter into the bottom line.

As a relative newbie to the world of blogging, certainly new to following it this closely, I would have to choose Directnic.com's in-house blog as one of the best efforts thus far to reach key publics. Originally created as a personal blog, this has become a tool to bring the outside world a look inside the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Directnic.com's Michael Barnett has catapaulted himself into position as a media darling based on his impassioned response to inhumanity that he saw going on around him. Barnett's musings have become a must-read for those wanting the inside track on the progress in New Orleans.

Blogs cannot be ignored. Their power and immediacy have brought down media giants. As this information venue continues to develop into a money-making scheme, experiments with advertising, subscription, and patronage systems are likely to continue. Personally, I would love to see a renaissance of patronage. The most romantic of the three models I mentioned, it would allow professional blogging to become something more than the musings of an individual or corporation. The arts might even find a foothold in a blogger's space, spawning modern masterpieces as-yet untold.

Blogs have been around for years but were only discovered by the mainstream media during Rathergate. Who would have thought that the ugliness of partisan politics would have the ability to spawn a resurrection of the arts?

Meagan Kelleher is the Internet Director at Channel 7 in Lake Charles, La. She took the online production class in the spring of 2005. We've all been really worried about her and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. We were relieved to correspond with her via email late last week.

Meagan helped get a weather blog started at KPLC, and she writes for her own Internet Director blog.

Here's the word from Meagan..

Hey! I'm doing ok. Well actually, right now I am STRESSED. We didn't have any weather because of the hurricane, the day Katrina dropped into New Orleans it was sunny and hot here in Lake Charles. Now we have over 2,500 evacuees from N.O. in our Civic Center alone which means the phone has been ringing off the hook from Saturday morning when I got in at 7:30 to right now as I am typing this email. I went into work on Saturday because we didn't know yet if the storm was going to turn back to N.O. yet or not. That day and Sunday were CRAZY. I was there all day and night, it was bizarre just sitting and waiting. Once it hit and the people started pouring in, it has been even crazier. People want to know why we aren't covering this parish or not, why we don't know this, why we aren't covering that. I feel so helpless, and I feel like people think are withholding information or we have some magic phone that calls into N.O., when we are just as clueless and lost as everyone else. In between answering phone calls, I've been trying my best to keep the website as updated as possible. Since I am the only person in the entire building that updates it, or even has any idea how to update it, it has been hectic. I don't get to do all the stuff that I wanted to do (Flash slide shows, maps, etc.) because I can barely post a story without the phone screaming at me every five seconds. Ah, the life of a journalist. Well, I wrote you quite a novel here, but it is kind of nice to take a quick little break from all the chaos. Tell everyone that I LOVE the new site, it looks amazing, and I am checking in on the newsroom blog everyday. I plan on updating mine here at the station today, so I hope you are all checking in on that. I know it is not as popular as the weather blog we have, but oh well, you have to start somewhere!

Ever since I can remember, when I walked into my grandparents' house, my grandpa has either been chilling in his recliner watching the news or sports on TV or reading the newspaper, even if it was the weekly edition of the Minneapolis Messenger. It seems he can't get enough of what's going on in the town, area, country or world. He is always tuned in.

I, on the other hand, am clicking on the mozilla icon on my desktop 20 to 30 times a day to check out some type of news. I'm using the same method most young people in America use to get their news, the internet. Yes, this generation of youth may still open a newspaper, briefly, or tune in to Fox News or CNN; but most prefer to use the web as their source for news. Hell, Mr. Gates and Microsoft are even making it easier on us online junkies to get their news by making on-screen reading easier.

Check Out Microsoft's advancement on this more user friendly online reading.

This younger generation focuses on immediacy not simplicity, getting what they want and avoiding what they want not, by interaction in search of the news. It's just more convenient to watch the Superdome roof being torn off by the winds of Hurricane Katrina or other videos of the hurricane at the click of a button. Why wait for it to be shown at the top of the hour on television or read it in the paper tomorrow morning?

My grandpa doesn't even know what the internet does and sure as hell couldn't operate a mouse to find the news.

When my children are old enough to be interested in the news, say the age of 10, it will at least be the year 2020. By then they definitely won't be opening a newspaper every morning to see what is happening around them -€” if newspapers manage to stave off their extinction that long. Learn more about newspaper transformation.

My kids will likely only see a miniscule amount of news clips from the morning or evening news on television. They are more likely to be watching news clips on their cell phones or ipods as they sit in math class. Yes, even at the age of 10, children will have cell phones or other devices for parents to keep tabs on them. Using these electronic devices, children will be able pick what they watch on the news. Once again, the new generation will search for immediacy over simplicity.

This search of immediacy is the reason that in 15 years, in one room at the same time, my grandfather will read his newspaper, my dad can watch his television, I can surf on my computer and my child will be able to operate his handheld electronic device, whatever it may be. And we all will be in search of the same thing: news.

I had a teacher who once told me there would always be a significant event that occurs once in our life, one where we would remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard of the event. That moment, this teacher said, would define our generation.

I never thought that I would have a defining moment such as that, and then it happened. I was a senior in high school at a small, private school in St. Charles, Missouri. I was lucky enough to be in our yearbook class where we were surrounded by a computer lab of about 16 Macs (a far cry from any KU computer lab, let me tell you). Working on one of my layouts -€” or more than likely procrastinating -€” I was browsing the internet and then I came upon it. Breaking news from the internet-€¦ in New York City the first of the twin towers had just been hit by an American plane. The day was September 11th, 2001, my defining moment and, as my teacher predicted, the defining moment for my generation.

Our generation's news sources were defined in that yearbook class. The internet and the television will always be a part of our lives. College students today live off technology. Almost any college student will understand IMing, blogging and poking without an explanation.

I recently learned from an acquaintance's IM -€˜away message' that he was leaving school to tend to his National Guard duties. The National Guard is sending him to New Orleans to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

I hadn't gotten word that the National Guard was heading to New Orleans until I saw this away message. I see this as another defining moment for me. This hurricane has brought our generation together again. We express our gratitude and our sorrow through our IMs and our blogs. As we pass news to our friends and others through our own words we become news sources and yes, we become citizen journalists.

Whether a blog is something we believe as "hard news" or as "entertainment news" is up to us. A current blog whose popularity grows by the minute brings us what seems to be "personal feel" to how this current event is affecting people in New Orleans and around the world.

News from every part of the world is at our finger tips. By going to any search engine and typing in News, I could access any area of news I wanted. Want something that happened around 40 years ago? Or how about today? The Web is a never-ending encyclopedia; news from today and news from yesterday are available to anyone.

Radio and TV have become recreational tools for my generation. My friends and my brother's friends use broadcasting to escape. Radio and TV have become media of fun. I can't even remember the last time I saw a friend so interested in the LJ-World or even our own KUJH TV, or deciding on talk-radio over pop music.

Our source of news today is the World Wide Web, the information superhighway. We are a generation that searches for our own news and our own answers. We have become seekers of news. Seeking to learn more about the everyday happenings, but looking at what interests or influences us, losing the general view and going to a specific view, our view.

Our children will continue to surpass us just as we surpassed our parents and they theirs. The internet was my defining moment. I wonder what my child's defining moment and on what medium they will hear it and see it.