McGuire on Media »

If the tablet is going to help newspapers then tend that garden

January 30, 2012 – 6:12 pm

Every morning as I pull my old bones out of bed I grab my Kindle Fire and my iPhone from their chargers.

First, I read some 150 overnight Twitter messages to get a handle on the big news developments. A well-put-together Twitter feed is a great news stream to begin a day.

Then I grab my trusty Kindle Fire and download three newspapers, the Arizona Republic, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and The New York Times.

This 40-year-newspaperman’s pristine hands never touch an ink-stained newspaper and there is no absolutely risk of inclement weather chasing a folded newspaper around a driveway.

Newspaper content is still central to my life but the dead-tree form of a newspaper is not. While the “tablet as newspaper savior “ debate rages on. I personally believe tablets will serve as an excellent outlet for newspaper content for some years. I doubt tablets can solve many of the newspaper’s revenue problems, but I am fairly sure tablet revenue will prove to be more than chump change.

But there is one thing of which I am absolutely sure, and that is—for me— tablets are the perfect answer.

I live in two places. I care a lot about about two communities, two sets of teams and two sets of politics, characters and obits. Being able to inform myself about both places 365 days of the year is a delightful luxury. And, for good measure I have the incomparable New York Times at my fingertips, including the Monday Media section of the New York Times, the best, most consistent newspaper package I can name.

The Kindle Fire presentation of news is not fancy. Newspapers like the Star Tribune and the Times organize their content on the Fire simply, according to the Front Page, Local, Features, Sports and Business.

For me the elegant organization and prioritization of content—like I find in the Star Tribune and the Times–is what allows any publication to rise above. Call me old-fashioned, but l want to know what the editors value and I don’t want to read my opinion page articles with my news stories.

My experience with the Arizona Republic in the last several weeks has not been near as rewarding as that of the cither two newspapers. Now, I am the first to caution that news is not what the editor had for breakfast this morning so I don’t want my personal experiences to become my agenda. However, I think my Republic experience speaks to a larger industry truth worth discussion.

For weeks the Republic “smushed” all their articles into three categories, features, news and sports and presented them haphazardly. Especially on Sunday not all of their articles even got published on the Kindle Fire edition. The reading experience was dismal and I desperately wanted to understand why.

After wrestling with the Republic’s internal organizational structure for several days I was able to talk to Mike Coleman the Republic’s Vice President for Digital Media. Mike is a great guy. I know from personal experience he is smart, articulate and caring.

My candid 20-minute conversation with Mike was informative, but vaguely disturbing. Mike made it clear he thinks his organization has knocked it out of the park with with its I-Pad edition. He bragged about the large number of page views and the large audience the Republic is serving with the I-Pad. As pleased as he was with that I-Pad edition he was personally disappointed with the Kindle Fire edition.

He admitted it’s been bad and without really making excuses explained that a move to a new content management system has complicated the task. He also complained the the Amazon feeds have been more difficult to work with than the I-Pad system.

Several times during the conversation Mike said “if we had an army of developers……..” I took from that the clear implication the Republic did not have enough digital development resources to solve the problem.

Therein lies the problem for newspapers. All of the competitors do have armies of developers. Facebook and Google get praise for their quick reactions to technical problems. They are obviously tech companies first.

I am fairly convinced by the fact that the Republic problem with the Fire has been solved Monday, that I caught the organization at a bad time and they will continue to fight the good fight to manage the rapidly changing tablet ecosystem.

There is a bigger problem though and that’s can newspapers as a species legitimately play in the digital world?

Newspapers have only two real choices. The first is to admit they are outdated analog companies and die a slow death. The second is to rethink their technical approach and make digital capabilities a top priority with the technical muscle and expertise needed to compete with “real” digital companies.

The path that will not work is to “do the best we can with what we have.” That path leads to perdition.

The interesting irony here is that the second greatest strength of analog newspaper companies, after news, has always been operational brilliance. “The daily miracle”’ really was miraculous and newspapers could beautifully solve practically any operational or logistical challenge.

Critics and newspaper advocates can argue all they want about who did what in the past and who wounded newspapers. That question is becoming stale and irrelevant. The only question that matters now is can newspapers become agile digital competitors?

The tablet is ballyhooed by many as a key element of a viable newspaper future. But unless the same operational brilliance that has always marked newspapers becomes a hallmark of digital problem-solving, I fear the future is dim.

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By admin | Posted in Business of journalism, Future of journalism, Leadership and Management, Newspapers, Online journalism | Comments (0)

ASU computer hacking reinforces a valuable truth about digital and humans

January 19, 2012 – 6:37 pm

As we were gathering for today’s Business and Future of Journalism class, one of the students fired off what he thought was a funny line: “This Digital thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

The joke referred to the classroom problems created by a hacker who apparently compromised the secure Arizona State University computer network.

I took that as a signal that one of my signature rants was in order.

Once class began, I asked the student to explain his point. He must have thought I was a little slow, but he explained that you can’t completely trust this digital age of ours because “stuff like this happens.”

Other students chimed in using words like “vulnerability.” There was an almost palpable feeling of betrayal in the classroom and the perpetrator was the digital world we’ve created. It seemed a widespread sentiment that despite the preaching of professors like me, we’re going to trust the digital revolution at our own peril.

There was some technical talk about firewalls and the need to protect ourselves but it seemed clear to me that even these “digital generation” students view man’s relationship to the digital age as sketchy.

Then a student gave me just the opening I was looking for to make what I thought was a crucial point no student had mentioned. “If we were using a printed book in this class,” the student said, “we could have continued our reading for this class. Her clear implication was that we wouldn’t have been subject to the whims of computers.

So I pounced.

Let’s say that we did use a book in this class, I said. And, the night before our class started, the book store was robbed and all our our books were stolen. The obvious question is would we question the printed book era? Would we worry about the reliability of the written word on dead tree products?

Of course we wouldn’t. We would curse the (insert vulgar name here) who had robbed the book store. Since Cain and Abel, and from the bronze age to the digital age, society has had to worry about scumbags of one sort or another ruining progress.

The figurative light bulbs flashed on in class as students responded to my now semi-hysterical attack on the morally bankrupt hackers who apparently get a big kick out of blowing up ASU for a day or two by STEALING data.

I often worry about society’s occasional efforts to defend hackers. Find examples here, here and here. Most of the people who take that position are “ends just the means folks,” and I get that.

It seems to me that the amount of hacking done for noble reasons pales compared to the amount of malicious, mean-spirited hacking that is akin to knocking over mailboxes and keying cars.

ASU might have been hacked for profit. That’s called stealing and fraud. Or the University might have been hacked because like Mt. Kilimanjaro, “it was there.” That’s the same twisted reasoning used by mailbox bashers and the people who key cars. Either way, the hacking is morally bankrupt and society has some tough choices to make.

Every day we become more dependent on digital and that means every day we become more vulnerable to the human jackasses who think it’s sport to screw with valuable data.

Certainly we need to make systems more secure. But we also need to deal sternly with both the “sport hackers” and the criminals who hold our economic future in their hands.

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The Schumpeterian moment in newspapers will require one litmus test—quality

January 11, 2012 – 1:48 pm

I am back. This is my first blog post since Aug 31, 2011 when I posted a speech I presented to the convention of the Society of Features Editors, Saturday, Aug. 27, in Tucson, Az.

Later that night of the speech, close to midnight, my plane landed in Minneapolis. Within minutes I had fallen and broken my left proximal humerus. Since my right arm has been merely decorative since birth, I was essentially armless for a month and unable to type effectively until mid-October.

After I recovered, the procrastination about this blog set in, the hurly burly of the end of the semester served as an excuse, and then over the last month I’ve fretted about the right subject for my return to this space.

On Tuesday I spoke to my new Business and Future of Journalism class about the Schumpeterian moment, looked at JimRomenesko.com and all was clear for my ride back into the fray.

I wrote about Paul Saffo’s identification of The Schumpeterian moment back in October of 2009. I routinely open a semester with a discussion of the theory there are times that are as destructive as they are creative.

The digital revolution and its aftermath are a perfect illustration of the universal power of the Schumpeterian moment. I get really concerned that journalists and journalism students work themselves into a narcissistic, “woe-is-me” frenzy believing that the media world is the epicenter of this dramatic digital change.

Horse-pucky.

This Schumpeterian moment is affecting practically every industry in the world from manufacturing to insurance to trucking to medicine. Tuesday I told my class an anecdote a student related to me in the fall semester when I mentioned this phenomenon. The graduate student said: “My dad is a senior engineer in an auto plant. He says a few years ago he supervised an entire floor of auto workers. Today he supervises two autoworkers and an entire floor of of robots.” Creative destruction writ large.

After relating that story and my explanation of creative destruction I asked my class of 47 students how many of their parents had experienced the phenomenon in the last few years. More than half, 26 students, raised a hand. The digital revolution is transforming our society at the same time both political parties ignore that reality.

We’ve been talking about dramatic change in the media business for many years now. It seems as if it’s worth looking at some of the changes and sorting smart from dumb.

The New Haven Register and some other Digital First newspapers are closing their printing facilities and farming out the printing to the Hartford Courant. I regret that 105 people are losing their jobs, but the action is a good and necessary one. You’re going to see many more decisions just like that one.

Jeff Jarvis in his book What Would Google Do? eloquently said, “Do what you do best and link to the rest.” That is exactly what news organizations need to do. Concentrate on news, community and revenue-producing relationships and forget the rest.

The New Haven Register owner, Digital First Media leadership, is obviously going to lead the way on this sort of thinking and a good way to follow it is by following John Paton’s blog and Steve Buttry’s Buttry Diary.

Another good example of focusing on what you do best is the New York Times’ shedding of the NYT Regional newspaper group. As an alumnus of the Lakeland Ledger and the Regional group I am emotionally connected to the Time”s 50 year effort to operate quality newspapers on a regional level. By the same token, my appreciation of the Schumpeterian moment allows me to recognize that the Times needs to focus its resources on becoming a premier digital operation. Again, they need to do what they do best, and link to the rest. Running a group of small to medium size newspapers is definitely not what the Times can do best.

The Times regional newspaper sale to Halifax group is a great illustration that we don’t have to salute all change as good. As newspaper prices continue to sink, a lower barrier to entry is going to bring a lot of owners into newspapers who could well endanger the quality of news.

I oppose most litmus tests for new newspaper owners and I pray some real revolutionaries get into the business to shake it up. Viva the revolutionaries, as long as they guarantee local news quality.

Generally speaking, big-footing newspaper staffs with onerous non-compete agreements that will chase off quality good people is not the best way to guarantee quality news.

The Schumpeterian moment is changing everything we know about journalism and the media business. The Rubicon that can’t be crossed is jeopardizing quality journalism.

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Speech to Society of Features Editors argued for a changed journalism mindset

August 31, 2011 – 4:58 pm

This was presented to the convention of the Society of Features Editors, Saturday, Aug. 27, in Tucson, Az.

I spoke to the predecessor of this organization in fall of 2001. It was a hard time. We were reeling from the events of Sept 11. The newspaper business was in what we thought were the pits. The future was in grave doubt. Most of us believed if we weren’t in hell, we could certainly see it from there.

I now laugh frequently at the people who tell me those were the “high times.” We speak of the journalism business of those times in hushed, reverential, even joyful tones. “Those were the great days!”

They didn’t feel so great at the time but who knew the crash that awaited us? The last five years or so have been incredibly difficult for everyone involved in newspapers from CEOs to news clerks. Uncertainty, fear, precipitous declines in revenue, a complete revolution of how we relate to readers. They have all bedeviled us. All those things have led us to today and you’ve survived. Pardon me if I don’t give a big hip, hip hooray for survival.

My task today is formidable. I was specifically asked to inspire you. I am going to decline that invitation. If you get inspired by this speech, I won’t argue, but I am far more interested in provoking you.

I want to confront some ugly realities. Then I want to probe some possible ways to think about changing those realities. I‘d kind of like to tick you off along the way. Tick you off enough that you consider new attitudes, new actions, and a new battle plan.

Let me first explain my current outlook on life. I emphasize current because I am not ashamed to say that for better or worse I have changed. I hope I have grown, adapted and I see the media world far differently than I once did.

I am a lifelong newspaper guy and for a long time that was my exclusive frame. I literally quit my paper route on Saturday when I was 17 and started to work for my local newspaper as a prep sports writer on the next Monday. I didn’t leave the newsroom for 36 years until I retired in 2002. I could see that the business was changing. Editors were being treated differently.

After retirement I explored some possibilities but I soon gravitated to the Academy. Thinking big thoughts has always appealed to me and affecting young lives who want to affect society through journalism was even more attractive.

As a professor specializing in the business and future of Journalism I was forced to confront some startling realities. I had to come to terms with the remarkable pace of change. I say with some pride I had to reinvent myself to shed knee-jerk journalism reactions.

The intimidating power of technology overwhelmed me at first and our relationship is still casual. I am not a techie or one of the “left-wing technologists” who I sometimes think are rushing the future.

Most importantly to our discussion today, on Aug 27, 2011 I am not “a newspaper at all costs” guy.

I have come to agree with the guru, Clay Shirky, who advises us to save journalism, not newspapers.

Shirky argues this in a seminal piece that chronicles the history of newspaper’s demise: “Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable.”

Shirky continues, “When we shift our attention from ‘save newspapers’ to ‘save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.”

I want to leverage off Shirky’s very important admonition today.

I don’t have to tell you that you are in a daily war. You battle for resources, you battle for people, and you battle a society that has devalued your work and that of your institution. You battle to protect what you had.

I understand your sense of siege and I applaud your determination, but I think we have to be cautious about fighting the wrong battles. Figuring out our true, correct fight is going to determine if we go down thrashing helplessly or if we genuinely reinvent.

I remember years ago attending one of those umpteen leadership sessions that had all the answers, most from people who had never even led a three person band! But this one was different because I actually retained something. I’ve retained it for 20 plus years.

The leadership coach told us that it was not our job to lead people through the forest.

It was our jobs as leaders to find the right forest.

The coach said we needed to get way above the trees and scan the horizon to determine the right forest for our team to compete.

I think that’s what Clay Shirky is telling us. When we’re obsessed with fighting newspaper battles, we’re in the wrong forest.

We have to come to terms with the fact that the forest has changed. As I tell my students four or five times every class session, we are in a Schumpeterian moment. The Schumpeterian moment is that seminal moment when the old gets destroyed and the new gets created.

I explain it to students by focusing on the horse drawn wagon business the day the first automobile put-putted through town. A lot of things people valued, from horse shoes to wagon wheels, were destroyed in that dramatic time but so much was created too. What was a multi-day trip from Phoenix to Tucson in 1900 took me about under two hours last night.

Despite some accusations, I did not date both Polly and Anna. Focusing on creation is damned difficult when destruction of things we love is occurring all around us. I get that.

In old media the formula was simple. We edit. You read. The newspaper was edited on a 24 hour cycle. You will read when we say you can read. TV also brought you news on THEIR schedule

The interactive web made that forced relationship of pushing news to audiences a joke. Now audiences “pull” news. People can talk, share, argue AND do business with each other any time they wish and oh, they demand immediacy!

I lived and edited a newspaper in a world where the media controlled the message. All pretenses of that control are gone. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook advocacy sites, etc., ended that control forever.

And let me burst that bubble that says this is all about you.

This is not a media issue. The Digital revolution has diminished the control of every industry you can mention from insurance to retail.

The world I addressed at this conference in 2001 does not exist. For scores of reasons, newspapers have been seriously damaged by this tsunami of digital and economic change.

There is a tremendous tendency to want to blame someone for newspapers’ fate. Fairly often I read tweets and snarky comments that anyone who was a CEO, Publisher or Editor in the 90’s should be summarily shot, jailed, hung by the thumbs or at least shamed into a commune in the desert.

Go ahead if you must. Whip away. I’ll take the blame and I’m sure many more powerful industry people than I, would step up too for your brickbats.

Now did that fix anything?

Assessing blame on editors, publishers, CEO’s, staffers, readers, the Internet or God, strikes me as a massive waste of time. We don’t have the time to waste.

What should be painfully obvious to us is there are many new media arrivals who are handing newspapers their collective lunch. That’s because their success markers are invention, innovation and risk. Yesterday is not their albatross.

While I think historical blame is folly, newspapers and its brain trust will certainly be held accountable in the future if we journalists keep cheering for the wrong thing and focusing on the wrong solutions.

To me, cheering for newspapers over journalism is the wrong thing. Cheering for doing your job in the same way you’ve always done it, is the wrong thing. Cheering for publishing companies to stop the painful wheels of change is the wrong thing.

Since I have been out of the business the survivors have done a solid job of adapting, innovating tremendous and working smarter. I take nothing away from the accomplishments that have started redirecting the ship.

I know some of you are pretty convinced your degree of change has been dramatic and you’ve done all the transforming you can.

My contention, and I will invite you to argue with it when I end, is that nothing newspapers has done is nearly big enough. Little of it is revolutionary enough. Little of it throws out what you know and starts over.

When I talked about this speech to some industry friends they immediately wanted to know what my prescriptions were. They wanted to hear my plans. They wanted a tactical report on their desks by Thursday.

That’s such a “newspaper’ thing to do.

If I had those plans this speech would cost you about 25 grand and my consultant retainer would be even higher.

Instead of giving you a blueprint I’d like to offer a way to think about this challenge a little differently.

The key to future is mindset. We have to change it. It’s negative. It’s fatalistic and it’s defensive.

I do not pretend this is a new thought but it can’t be said enough. The only sliver of a chance newspapers have, to be the players that save journalism, is to fundamentally change the mindset we bring to the task. We must release ourselves from the manacles that bind our thinking.

Let me give you an illustration.

This summer I was the lone attendee at the Minneapolis Star Tribune annual meeting. I have a few shares of their stock and I was curious about how a newspaper that’s been through bankruptcy is talking about the future.

As Michael Sweeney, CEO of Star Tribune Holdings and Michael Klingensmith, Publisher and CEO of the newspaper talked strategy; they focused on their commitment to increase the share of consumer revenue as a percentage of total revenue.

The light bulb went on for me. The brass bands played. Eureka!

I found the Sweeney/Klingensmith strategic construction brilliant.

Now you’re probably thinking what my good friend, John Dille thought when I recounted this to him. John, an adjunct business and future professor at the Cronkite school and the owner of the Elkhart Truth, thought I was off my rocker again for being so enthusiastic and said, “well yeah, a pay wall.”

I grinned, paused and then said, “John would you rather work for a newspaper that is constructing a pay wall or a newspaper that has told you that increasing consumer revenue is your primary goal?”

John’s eyes lit up immediately. He got it. He completely understood the negative, confining implications of the term “pay wall” compared to concentrating on raising consumer revenue

John agreed with me that the Star Tribune idea of focusing on consumer revenue could be massively liberating idea.

That concept makes your Ipad and Kindle businesses imperative. It allows you to engage with consumers in much more targeted ways. Thinking about consumer revenue opportunities with every targeted content endeavor opens up your imagination and, hopefully, consumer wallets. Focusing on your content as a business center rather than as a cost center has to liberate.

Crucial to this mindset change has to be rejection of the one consumer idea that has hamstrung newspapers for the last decade—one size fits all.

An all-encompassing, make-everybody-happy approach made great sense when there were only a couple of scarce sources of news in a town. It makes no sense at all in an era of abundance. Your job is to rise above the cacophony of information and junk on the web and provide your readers with genuine value.

I told some faculty folks the other day that the key to engagement with students is to meet them where they live. Dille translated that as “enter through the consumer’s experience.”

If your features section and your newspaper entered engagement through the customer experience how would your work change? Could you make people pull your news ahead of other sources?

I submit that for most of you, your mindset and that of your superiors still assumes you are in control. It assumes readers have some basic obligation to your product the way you want to produce it. They do not.

When you get back home do me a favor. Go to the supermarket. As you shop, deeply study the consumer focus you’re seeing.

None of those products in that store assume you have to buy them. Notice there are several different toothpastes, all differentiated according to product benefit. Whiter teeth, cavity control, fresher breath, all those things in one. And then let’s talk flavors. Cinammon Rush is my favorite!

There are scores of cereals differentiated by bright, animated packaging and product purpose. Cherrios for cholesterol, Wheaties so I can leap building in a single bound and Bran flakes so I can….well…you know.

Then look at the products that differentiate by price and perceived quality.

Have you ever looked at your newspaper that way? I suspect you haven’t because we have been an advertising dependent business for 80 years. Few of us have ever been forced to think about competing on shelves for attention. And when we have, we’ve thought about our entire newspaper package rather than thinking about discreet offerings that might compete in the marketplace on their own.

Some of you are certainly thinking, well this little, fascist traitor is talking about mmmmmmmmarketing. There’s no place for that kind of language in a family newspaper!

Well, bucko, there had better be or we’re all toast. That smug conviction that its newspaper reader’s job to read us has been wrong for 25 years and it is simply addled fantasy now. You are in the competitive marketing fight of your life. And, please don’t think I am only talking about Sports and Features. News, business and local news can be effective consumer products too.

I do not contend that this particular mindset change will revolutionize your business.

I do contend that our newspaper mindset is holding us back in thousands of ways and we need to dump those limiting mindsets.

Now there may be some of you who are still dismissing my words because you are at your innovative apex. You are convinced that you have moved past that old-fashioned thinking and are innovative pioneers in the newspaper business. I apologize for underestimating you.

I am afraid I am operating under the impression that Google, Groupon, Apple, Facebook and Twitter, new media startups and scores of garage entrepreneurs are out innovating newspapers on a daily basis. I am afraid I find little newspaper innovation breath-taking. I guess I am convinced that risk-takers without the mindset boundaries of newspapering are legitimate threats to newspaper survival.

If you believe I have a point I hope you’ll consider that if journalism is to be saved by newspaper practitioners, the hand cuffs must come off. We can’t think like newspaper people anymore.

We have to have the open minds of entrepreneurs. We have to have the innovative imaginations of liberated explorers. We have to embrace risk like bungee jumpers. We have to listen to young people as if they are our saviors, because they probably are.

If journalism is to be saved by newspaper practitioners who bring the right values of truth-telling, minimizing harm, independence and accountability, then newspaper mindsets must escape the prison of day-to-day crises spawned by business troubles.

Your mindset about what you are doing and why, is going to be the difference between triumph and a slow fade to black.

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By admin | Posted in Business journalism, Future of journalism, Journalism education, Leadership and Management, Media Criticism, Newspapers, Online journalism, Social media, Speeches | Comments (0)

Lessons American Journalists can learn from the Murdoch scandals

August 23, 2011 – 6:52 pm

On Monday night I did this season’s first Must See Monday presentation at The Walter Cronkite School. I spoke on the lessons we can learn from Britain’s Murdoch scandals. There were 200-250 people present, largely Cronkite freshmen and first year grad students. The prepared text is below. Again I admit to occasional ad libs that are not here.

To say this has been a summer of discontent for Rupert Murdoch, News Corp and Britain is like saying it’s hot in Phoenix. Doesn’t cover it.

Scandal, Parliament hearings, Prime Minister under siege, Scotland Yard’s pristine image in tatters. It’s enough to ruin several good afternoon teas.

And yet, there’s a tendency to say that it is all so very British. Their strange legal system, their stratified press with all those steamy tabloids and a constantly embattled government, make it a distinctly British problem in many minds.

It is true that Murdoch has thrived in a place where the First Amendment does not reign supreme, but I am going to argue tonight that the Murdochian scandals hold important lessons for American media.

The first thing we need to do is agree on what we are talking about. I appreciate that not everyone made this case their summer entertainment like I did so I left a fine Chronology from The Week magazine on your chairs. I hope you had a chance to read it.

The following summary is based largely on that material with some opinion I could not resist. The facts and the expression of those facts are the Week’s. The smart-alec comments are mine

In a nutshell, The News of The World, Britain’s most popular Sunday tabloid with 2.6 million circulation was caught hacking into celebrity phones in 2006. Two News of the world employees were arrested and convicted of that phone hacking.

News Corp and Scotland Yard swore that was the extent of the corruption. It wasn’t. For years Murdoch’s papers curried favor with British government officials, arguably corrupted the police and continued hacking into the phones of celebrities, Royals and politicians.

Rupert Murdoch, his family and his executives enjoyed incredible access to the halls of British power.

Two great newspapers brought all this tumbling down. Britain’s Guardian has been an absolute pit bull on this story. In 2009 they reported that News of the World had hacked a large number of phones but also disclosed the parent company, News Corp, had spent $1.6 million to settle such cases.

The case against News Corp might have languished had the New York Times magazine not done a dramatic expose in September of 2010. That investigation propelled the story until it exploded July 4 of this year with the Guardian revelation that News of The World had hacked the phones of a 13-year-old girl named Milly Dowling after she had been kidnapped. The erased messages on Milly’s phone had, for a time led her parents to believe she was alive.

That disclosure blew the story into another dimension. Public outrage, Parliamentary hearings, governmental butt-covering and massive police embarrassment followed. And Murdoch and his family are in a load of legal, financial and ethical trouble–so much trouble News Corp may not survive in its present form.

Now let’s cut back to American Journalism. Any student who has taken my Media Ethics class knows that I believe the economic tsunami that has hit American media is changing ethical behavior. Fewer reporters, more focus on the bottom line no matter what it does to news, and the ubiquity of 24/7 news are creating enormous temptations for shortcuts and excess. Old-guard people, like me, are often accused of overreacting to these ethical transgressions. When we see them as a potentially slippery slope we are told we don’t understand where journalism is heading.

In fact, I think I do and I don’t like it one bloomin” bit!

I am going to discuss five remarkable lessons I think we can glean from the Murdoch scandal and I will talk about them in the context of American Journalism.

Celebrities are not human and have nothing akin to privacy

Bob Wooten of the NY Daily News, a paper seldom viewed as a paragon of journalistic virtue, called News of the World “a British tabloid that has titillated readers for years with tawdry sex, drug and celebrity scandals.”

The hacking of celebrity phones by News of The World is well documented. A BBC article says British police have a list of over 4,000 possible targets. BBC’s list of targets includes stars, politicians and sports figures. Yahoo. Com says Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and George Michael are on that list. Law and actor Hugh Grant have been very vocal about suing.

This was a newspaper that became so obsessed with profiting from the personal peccadilloes and miseries of celebrities, politicians and Royals that they chose to violate the law. Why would that happen?

The answer is simple. Certain people are devalued as not really human. Editors came to believe that the lives of celebrities, politicians, sports celebrities and even Royals are without privacy because of their celebrity. I suspect new of The world editors used that slippery slope rationale that the public “OWNS” celebrities so all is fair. In fact I read many News of the World staffers decided knowing about these famous folks was always in the “public interest.(Kindle Single on the Guardian’s version of the entire affair is the source.)

At one point, the News of the World even got access to the medical records showing then Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s son had Cystic Fibrosis and they printed it! Why does anyone need to know anything beyond the fact that the boy is sick? They don’t, unless reporters and editors hold no regard for anything akin to privacy and assume that celebrities and politicians are not really human, “they’re different.”

That brings us to a very tricky point that my Ethics students have heard before: Readers own responsibility for rampant, inhuman, privacy invading celebrity coverage. It’s no accident News of the World was the most popular Sunday paper in Britain. Readers loved all that celebrity gossip and character assassination. Then they were shocked that News of the World was so insensitive as to hack the phone of Milly Dowling. British readers rose up in protest amid their unabashed shock.

C’mon readers, why on earth would that excess surprise you? When you start devaluing human beings just because they are celebrities it becomes very easy to slide down the slippery slope into the ethical muck.

In December of 2009 I complained that the voyeurism around the Tiger Woods case was unseemly and beyond human decency. A former ASU student and prominent local writer, Adam Kress, wrote this articulate comment:. “I agree with you completely on all the arguments about journalistic responsibility and ethics. Those are the standards that guide my career. But what you fail to realize is that this story is not about journalism, it’s about how information is dispersed in 2009 and beyond. The “story” is no longer owned and operated by the mainstream media, it’s owned by the people. The people have made their desires known, and like it or not, it’s not to wait for the AP report. The people do not have a right to know the Tiger story, but they furiously demand it.”

My strong admonition tonight is if we keep demanding to know intimate, invasive details about our celebrities do not be surprised when someone publishes those same intimate details about you!

The philosopher Kant told us ALL human beings are owed dignity. If the American press and public don’t recognize that pretty quickly, the British tabloid sewer is NOT far away.

Unseemly influencing of government

The modus operandi of the Murdochians has been cozy relationships with police and politicians unless and until they needed pushing around.

It’s been reported that Prime Minister Cameron had 26 meetings with top News Corp officials in 15 months. The head of Scotland Yard had 18 in about the same amount of time. In that same, simply remarkable piece on Daily Beast by a writer named Alex Massie, it is alleged the Prime Minister David Cameron was coerced by a Murdoch executive to hire Andy Coulson for a press liaison job because a BBC candidate was not acceptable to News Corp.

Someone will certainly write a book about the unseemly relationships between the Murdoch empire and the Metropolitan Police, or Scotland Yard, but it appears News of the World repeatedly paid off policeman, News Corp showered top police officials with gifts. If you’re not suspicious News Corp influenced police to downplay the first investigation into phone hacking, you’re a saintly, trusting soul.

The Murdoch tabloids had another shameless way to influence politicians. Bully the hell out of them! The New York Times published a shocking tale of how a Parliament member named Claire Short was horribly bullied when she had the temerity to suggest nude photos of women on page 3 of one of Murdoch’s tabloids was inappropriate. She was subjected to ridicule and name-calling and even a public demonstration that would make a 5^th grade bully recoil in horror.

The Times story goes on to say, “It is the fear of incidents like this, along with political necessity, that has long underpinned the uneasy collusion between British politicians and even the lowest-end tabloids here.”

The Times adds, “However much they might deplore tabloid methods and articles…… politicians have often been afraid to say so publicly, for fear of losing the papers’ support or finding themselves the target of their wrath.”

News of the World and the Sun violated ethical standards like a careening drunkard. Unwarranted bribes and payments to police, collusion with government leaders, and malicious use of press power to intimidate political power in addition to the underlying crime of hacking all make News Corp something other than a responsible journalism organization.

A core value of journalism is that news organizations must be Independent. They must be monitors of government not participants. They must hold the powerful accountable to the public not make power accountable to their own personal business machinations. They must not create obvious institutional conflicts of interest.

The press cannot mingle its mission with police and government.

That’s one of the reasons the decline in reportorial resources in American Journalism is so damned dangerous. Increasingly the American press relies on police and government sources for information without challenge.

Some people decry the adversarial relationship between the press and government. Even I once wondered if we sometimes took the adversarial thing too far. Not anymore. The news culture is such now that the only way we can protect the public and keep ourselves out of hopeless conflict is to realize police and government are not our friends!

Buying news

There are very specific accounts of News of the world buying information about the Royal Family and even an account of a reporter trying to buy a confidential directory of Royal family phone numbers.

According to the Guardian police, officers were paid for news and information. It should be obvious by now that News of the World and News Corp knew few ethical boundaries but this issue is especially interesting because buying news has been in the forefront this summer in the United States.

Adweek wrote this recently. “ABC had come under fire amid recent revelations that it was habitually compensating its sources by way of large “licensing fees”—cash payments ostensibly for the use of proprietary photo and video material in its news segments. The network’s news division paid Casey Anthony $200,000 for the use of photos in a story it ran in 2008.”

Several other news outlets have been accused of using these same “licensing fees” to buy news.

There are many people who ask “what’s so wrong with paying for news.” Truth is the problem. Journalists first commitment must be to the truth. If I start putting a bounty on news and information I may buy “marketable falsehoods.” Further problem, especially in a case like the Casey Anthony case is I am often buying a one-sided, self-aggrandizing version of the story that again distances us from truth.

Buying news is fiddling with reality and any time the press fiddles with reality, journalistic values are likely to be violated.

Creating a culture of wrongdoing while maintaining innocence.

One of the incredibly fascinating things about the Murdoch case is the constant protestations of innocence from top executives like Rebekah Wade Brooks, Les Hinton, James Murdoch and even Rupert Murdoch.

I think it stretches credulity to think Brooks didn’t know about the phone hacking but the other three may be telling the truth, kind of.

I want to read a fascinating excerpt from another great story in The Guardian.

“Over the two years since the phone-hacking affair reignited, the consistent response to victims of the illegal practice, and to the journalists, lawyers and politicians who caused trouble, has been to browbeat and threaten them.

The ethic of News International is built around the fear of the newsroom, about which former News of the World reporter and whistleblower Sean Hoare gave pathetic testament to Panorama before he died in his home last week. The bullying by Andy Coulson of a sports reporter named Matt Driscoll, and the menacing visits to his home by his employers after he suffered a mental collapse, led to a reported award of £800,000.

NI executives treat outsiders as badly as they do their own, but the essential point is that lawful and unlawful investigative techniques were adapted to become the company’s chief means of enforcement.”

I urge everyone to seek out this story on the Guardian web site by Henry Porter of The Observer, headlined “Phone hacking scandal has exposed a culture of bullying and intimidation at News International” It will curdle your breakfast milk and it should make it obvious why the Murdochians are being disingenuous at best, and lying at worst when they say they were oblivious to the wrong-doing.

You see culture begets action. If I say I deplore dishonesty but I give big rewards like A’s to plagiarizers and fabricators what will happen? Of course, I will create countless plagiarizers and fabricators. People will watch my actions and not listen to my words.

In the same way at the News of The World, the people who broke big stories seemed to be high-paid stars and everyone knew they got those stories by hacking phones so a culture of phone-hacking would inevitably follow.

That’s why it doesn’t matter a whit if top Murdochian executives knew each individual illegal act their subordinates were committing. It is obvious to all but my five-year-old grandson’s kindergarten class, that the constant brow-beating of staff for salacious scoops by News of the World editors created a culture of wrong-doing.

Just to put a fine point on “should have known,” let’s consider this. Editors Coulson and Brooks claim they didn’t know hacking was going on and yet they were taking credit for big scoops. Any editor who approves controversial scoops and doesn’t know their source is either an abject idiot or lying through their teeth. None of these people seem to be idiots.

I pray to God the American application of this issue is obvious to every Publisher,CEO and editor of American media corporations who continually slash resources at the same time they demand news staffs do more with less.

You just watch the protestations of innocence by executives when ethical shortcuts caused by unbending pressure for more and better stories make scandalous headlines. The executives will point fingers at reporters and editors but all should know the fault will be with the leaders who are creating pressurized newsroom cultures.

Newspapers with courage triumph

For all the scandal, for all the ethical transgressions by Murdoch’s newspaper, for all the abuse of the press privilege, let’s not miss one crucial fact in this story.

Courageous, relentless and principled newspaper coverage exposed this scandal.

If there was such a thing as an International Pulitzer Prize The Guardian would win it. I’d love to see that happen!

The British scandal, like so many scandals before shows public officials, police and corporate moguls will often deny, lie, cover-up, bully, and isolate the courageous newspapers and whistleblowers who stand up to them.

Despite police agencies and Murdoch money creating a whitewash of the first investigation after the first newsbreaks in 2005, The Guardian stayed attentive to the story. Even in the face of brutal lies and possibly defaming statements from News International executives and police, the Guardian hung tough.

Finally in July of 2009, a Guardian story by Nick Davies said James Murdoch had paid more than a million pounds to settle a legal action in an effort to keep criminal activity at the company under wraps.

That story by a determined investigative reporter blew the Murdoch story apart, again kind of. Scotland Yard again said there was nothing new and tried to ignore the investigation. Only determined reporting and a remarkable decision by Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian kept the story gasping for air.

Rusbridger and Davies went to the New York Times and tried to sell the story to them. The Times did not rush and seemingly reported very carefully. In September of 2010, the Times Sunday magazine did a strong story that didn’t change much in the British investigation but encouraged other news outlets to join the fray. Our own Dan Gillmor of Cronkite told me, “that story kept the case alive.”

And then Nick Davies revealed the New of The World had hacked into Milly Dowling’s phone. Rusbridger said this in his Amazon Kindle recounting of the Guardian’s role in the story: “Rarely has a single story had such a volcanic effect. Suddenly you couldn’t keep the politicians, journalists, police officers and regulators off the TV screens.”

I don’t know about you but hearing that tale makes me want to stand up and salute the power of a courageous, relentless, duty-bound press.

There are scores of issues resulting from the Murdoch scandal that should trigger hours of ethical debate. We need to have that debate in America before we have our own corrupting scandal.

But the bottom line for me, the cause for exultant celebration, is that the press still works.

If Murdoch’s empire comes tumbling down it will be because of one courageous, diligent British newspaper with a nudge from America’s most important newspaper.

Long live great journalism.

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Engaging students in journalism classes

August 18, 2011 – 2:18 pm

On Wednesday I was asked by the Cronkite School to give a presentation to our annual faculty retreat on student engagement in journalism classes. These are my prepared remarks though I admit to some ad libs that do not appear. I do not view myself as an expert but this is how I approach engagement.

Basic principles

Engagement is not easy or natural—We’re dealing with students with unformed frontal lobes, not to mention facing lots of pressures from work to alcohol to drugs to family pressures in this tough economy and the dreaded “coupling” issues. That’s a lot of things on their minds and all those are your competition.
It must be expected/demanded– I am convinced engagement only comes if you expect it and demand it. From my first day I espouse the theory that the class will be more fun and a far better learning experience if we are all engaged. In no uncertain terms I make it clear I will enforce attention and ban obvious distractions.
It’s a two-way obligation–While I have no trouble demanding engagement, I also believe that it’s a two-way street. In order to get engaged students I have to be at the top of my own game. I need to be well-prepared, clear, conscious of what works in terms of engagement and committed to giving the best of me I can offer.
Engagement is the Holy Grail. All teaching follows from it—Talking to myself is not my idea of fun. The reason I teach is to touch young lives by making them think in ways they’ve never thought before. That requires me to have their hearts and souls committed to learning. I think that’s what I get paid for above all else.

My approach

Know and respect the students and their interests— There are 8 million stories in the Naked City and 1,300 great ones at Cronkite. All our students have fascinating interests, traits and backgrounds that will intrigue you. I do three things to get at those. I ask them on the first day of class to tell me something that will make me remember them. They usually provide me with lunch conversation for weeks. Secondly, as I teach I am constantly asking questions to see if any students have a particular relationship to a subject we are discussing such as SEO or intermediaries. Finally, I get to class 10-15 minutes early and listen to the gossip. Invaluable!
Wherever possible, link those interests to what you do. Knowing about my students is not enough. I have to use that knowledge to make my material more relevant and interesting. A few semesters back I had a student in my business and future class who was a music technician of considerable skill. He was collaborating for free with some major bands to enhance his personal brand. As such, he had some very interesting ideas about copyright. A student, originally only marginally interested in the class material, became a centerpiece of the class because I was able to incorporate his interests in to the class material
Understand where the students are in their lives and respect them for it—Most of our students are incredibly anxious about their futures. Contemplating the business and future of journalism is a far more trying experience for them that it is for a 60 year-old tenured professor. It is my obligation to meet them where they live. I can’t be disconnected from their reality. Some of my colleagues ask me why I keep changing my syllabus. The answer is simple, The world they are going to work in keeps changing so I have to change to keep the class relevant and engaging.
Read the class constantly. Be willing to trash your plan and go with what works.– I am always sensitive to what’s working and what’s not. Sometimes I will change directions in the middle of a class session and eliminate stuff that is boring the hell out of students. My basic rule is don’t talk more than 8 minutes without seeking discussion and input but if that material is putting people to sleep I move to another area..
Histrionics have their place—I have often said that if it will guarantee engagement I will wear a pink tutu and dance. I haven’t had to do that, but my infamous shouts of touchdown and weird “McGuirisms” are all designed to keep people awake and engaged. Just like producing a newscast or a newspaper you want surprises, rewards and “holy bleep Mabels” to retain audience.
Be passionate: If you don’t care, they won’t either—Passion will overcome a lot of engagement sins. Journalism and passion should go together. I believe totally and completely in what I did in the newsroom and I want students to see that. I want them to catch that same passion.
Teach critical thinking and values as much as stuff—Students find much of life, business and journalism to be mysterious. They are going to forget a lot of the stuff we teach them. They are not going to forget ideas about life or how to organize a cogent argument. The more relevancy we provide the more engagement we will get.

My biggest engagement challenges

The Hijackers—In a class that encourages participation you are always going to get a few “hijackers” that dominate the conversation. I admit to “hijacking” tendencies of my own so you’d think I’d be very sensitive to it, and yet I am not always. These dominators will ruin engagement in a heartbeat so you must stop them early. The right way to deal with them is before class in a private aside. The wrong way to deal with them is to engage them in class. Unfortunately, I have done both.

The quiet, inscrutable ones—The quiet students in your class are either very bright observers who are learning in their own way or they are disengaged slackers. I have not figured out ways to distinguish them. Sensitivity and finding their interest points are my only tools.

A class is a journey and where you end is what matters—The semester is long and bumpy. You try some things and they don’t work and you go back at it with more creativity. There have been semesters when I have called a time-out midway through a class and started over in the next class. Usually by the end of a class you have a rhythm of engagement that works.

You can’t please all the people all the time—Your act is simply not going to resonate with everyone. Some people will simply not engage for one reason or another. Move on. Make sure they don’t infect other people but do not spend 80 percent of your resource on the 5 percent who don’t want to play. That’s a crucial management lesson it took me years to learn, but it also applies to teaching.

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Message to high school J-students:Storytelling needs to survive the media tumult

April 28, 2011 – 7:35 pm

The following speech will be delivered at 7 pm. Thursday, April 28, 2011 to teachers and award-winning students of the Arizona Interscholastic Press Association.

Congratulations to all the award winners and to their teachers.

In some ways it’s a ludicrous for me to be speaking to you tonight.

You students represent tomorrow. My career represents yesterday.

Just how different yesterday is from tomorrow was brought home to me this past weekend when I was reading a new book by Steve Rosenbaum called Curation Nation. Rosenbaum says we are on the verge of a data tsunami. He quotes Google CEO Eric Schmidt as saying, “between the dawn of civilization and 2003 there were just 5 exabytes of information created. That much information is now created every two days!”

Think about that, we now create in two days what it once took thousands of years to create!

You are going to be literally swimming in information, or perhaps more precisely, drowning in it. The demands placed on you, the journalist, are going to be unlike anything I ever experienced and unlike anything my peers can imagine.

There are a lot of so-called experts who are incredibly anxious to tell you what your journalistic careers could and should look like in 15 years. Frankly, they are charlatans playing an alluring game of three-card Monte.

The only thing anyone can effectively predict about technology, information and journalism is limitless possibilities.

Your mobile device may be your television, your newspaper and your college textbook all in one. Literally anyone could be a content creator. Informational jewels and junk could be indiscernible.

In my Business and Future of Journalism class I explore all the phenomena that are going to shape your media lives. They include the loss of corporate control, the rise of consumer control, and the amazing shift from media scarcity to media abundance. I tell my students we are in a Schumpeterian Moment. That means the old world is being destroyed and a new one is being created. And we’re caught in the middle of that.

All of those are important issues for future journalists to contemplate, but this week I have been more of a romantic than a pragmatist. When I make speeches like this I usually take a stab at predicting what the future is going to look like. Tonight, I am going to hope rather than predict.

My romanticism was rekindled Sunday morning as I sipped my latte at our favorite breakfast place. As I enjoyed an Arizona Easter morning outdoors, I was mesmerized by every word of a two story package in the Arizona Republic on Gabby Giffords and her husband Astronaut Mark Kelly.

The stories, beautifully crafted by Jaimee Rose with help from Shaun McKinnon and others, took me back 45 to 50 years ago when I’d lay out the Sunday Detroit Free Press on my living room floor and devour the long Sunday pieces for which the Free Press was famous.

Obviously the subjects and the authors of those stories have faded into my dusty memory. I do remember my sense of total engagement as a 15 and 16 year-old kid. I was fascinated by the true tales told by pure craftspeople. These were writers given enough time and space, and enough creative freedom to produce tales that informed, entertained and evoked deep emotion. The writers created a narrative that invited me to invest my time and emotional energy.

That’s exactly what Jaimee Rose and her compatriots did in those stories about Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly last Sunday. I think there are three distinct things Rose and her co-writers can teach you students about how to create great stories that are worth reading from beginning to end.

1. Reporting, reporting, reporting. Details are what bring a story to life, but young writers often wonder where does all that detail come from? It comes from digging, asking and listening. It comes from a willingness to be surprised. It comes from keen observation.

When Rose writes that Giffords “pushes a grocery cart up and down the hospital halls as therapy,” we can all imagine that in our minds. And when she writes, “The halls are all florescent lighting and linoleum. In the garden out front, hot-pink roses keep company with boxwood hedges and a bronze sculpture of Prometheus Unbound,” we feel like the reporter has taken us with her to Houston.

No detail should be disregarded. You never know where it might fit. Be persistent. Writers like Rose and McKinnon are painting a picture and they needed to appreciate all the nuances to paint that picture.

2. You must capture feelings, not just events, to create authenticity. An event writer would say: Giffords speaks in one or two word sentences. Rose told us in a quote from her doctor that when Giffords has trouble expressing herself, “She’ll sigh out of exasperation.” I heard and felt that sigh.

In Sunday’s piece, Rose and McKinnon tell us how Giffords found out about the Jan 8 shooting and the associated deaths. “It was from a Times story they were reading together that Giffords first learned that six people died in the shooting that wounded her. Kelly tried to skip a couple of lines in a story, but Giffords, following along, caught him. When she realized the truth she began to cry.”

“She began to cry” are simple and clear words, yet in the context of explaining events, they give authenticity to a great story. Don’t just ask people to describe events. Ask them how the event made them feel. Ask them what they did during the event.

3. Great storytelling must evoke emotion. It may be humor, it may be empathy and it may be anger. The reader has to feel a well-told tale in his heart and soul. I felt terrifically edified by the Giffords pieces, but I also felt a share of Giffords’ and Kelly’s struggle. I see their mountains, and I now have an investment in seeing them climb them.

In fiction, we call that caring about the characters. Great storytelling always makes you feel deeply about well-drawn characters. Rose and McKinnon painted clear pictures of Giffords and Kelly and some of the side characters like Nurse Poteet.

There is a secret about evoking emotion. You have to be a feeling, sensitive being yourself. Caustic cynicism may be fine for covering a fire or the legislature but when you are telling great stories you need to turn on the “feelings’ radar and be comfortable in your own skin. Arms-length story-telling is usually pretty obvious and pretty ineffective.

Great story-telling always has a grand story arc. Sometimes, it’s jealousy. Sometimes it’s hate. For me, there were two grand story arcs in the Giffords and Kelly stories–love and perseverance.

A great tale well-told is like a homily, full of meaning and lessons.

Please notice I have not mentioned the words newspaper, computer, book or magazine in this discussion of what makes great story-telling.

Beautiful story-telling must survive no matter the medium.

I applaud the work of my friend and Cronkite colleagues Len Downie and Rick Rodriquez who have done so much to advocate for the preservation of accountability reporting, investigative journalism and in-depth reporting. And, another friend and colleague Dan Gillmor’s advocacy for citizen journalism is a serious and valuable endeavor. Beautiful storytelling also needs an advocate.

As I said when I began, nobody knows where journalism is going. I do know you and your teachers are going to have more to say about that future than I will.

That’s why I urge you to go home and read last Sunday’s pair of Republic stories. Read novels. Read non-fiction books that tell stories. One suggestion is a funny narrative about a deadly serious subject, the Afghan war in Kim Barker’s book The Taliban Shuffle. Seek out great stories. Analyze them. Try to emulate them.

No matter where technology takes media and society we are always going to require the nourishment of well-told stories. They make us a richer society, more appreciative of relationships, emotions and personal well-being.

My hope tonight is two-fold.

I hope all of those with power in all sorts of journalism businesses protect, nurture and enable great story telling. I pray that they don’t get so consumed with birthers, Sheens and the latest nasty mean-spirited political charge that they forget the life-giving force of great story-telling.

My final hope is for you young people. I hope, I ask, I plead that you read great stories and you applaud great stories and that you write great stories that make your world a better place

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Brian Storm is a journalism original

April 21, 2011 – 10:27 am

Yesterday I spent two hours listening to a journalism original. Brian Storm is a colorful character with colorful language and an inspiring obsession with storytelling.

Storm, the mind behind the MediaStorm enterprise is the kind of entrepreneur every journalist needs to study. Frustrated with corporate journalism and software development Storm re-launched MediaStorm in 2005 to create what Storm calls cinematic narratives. Spend some quality time looking at some of his work and you start to understand his immense talent and you get a taste of his dedication.

Storm is a visiting professor at the Walter Cronkite School this semester. He’s spent three weeks here at various times. Today he met with faculty for a far-ranging conversation which flowed smoothly from his specific story telling techniques to his multi-pronged business model.

Storm is confident and brash but more than a little self-deprecating. He doesn’t seem to think what he does is real big deal. It is. His ability to take apart multi-media storytelling and explain the hundreds of nuances he builds into each piece is mesmerizing. If you ever get a chance to listen to this dude it will reinforce your belief in craft. His sarcastic wit and salty language makes a newsroom veteran feel right at home.

I could never do justice to his animated analysis of what he does as a storyteller with audio, video, still photos and text, but a few snippets of his thinking might be illuminating.

He’s looking for “universal stories.” He says those are not perishable. They’ll hold up over time and they are about big ideas like love, death and struggle. He called one story “your typical don’t judge a book by its cover story.”

Storm has plenty to do but he could easily teach teaching. His careful dissection of his work makes you smile, muse and pulls you up short. He talks about the art of mixing photos and video, discusses “frozen moments” and advocates for highlighting body language in video. “Video is important because 80% of communication is body language.” I got the warm fuzzies listening to a guy who has thought so deeply about his craft.

His journalistic philosophy is “shoot everything and we’ll figure it out in post-production.” He’s been teaching our students the importance of music as a narrative element and telling them they must have a reason for an edit– they can’t just make an edit without a good rationale.

I could go on an on about his observations about technique but, as he says, there is a limit to how much people want to see the sausage being made. Storm’s sausage is particularly brilliant.

Storm’s discussion of his business is just as riveting. I love the term John Thornton of the Texas Tribune has apparently coined: “revenue promiscuity.” Storm told me he wasn’t familiar with the term, but from what I heard he is an avid practitioner.

While Storm says sincerely, money is not his motivator, he understands that without money he can’t do the kind of storytelling that matters so deeply to him. So he has developed five streams of revenue. His publication business which is comprised of the 28 major pieces he and his team have produced; a syndication business; he produces work for corporate clients from Starbucks to Discovery Channel and AARP; Storm and his crew are also in the training business; and they are in the process of developing a software product that made the Cronkite faculty eyes pop.

I admire Brian Storm’s talent. I love his irreverence. I think his entrepreneurialism is a model for frustrated journalists. Above all though, Brian Storm’s dedication to journalistic and multimedia storytelling is a pleasant comfort that the future holds great things.

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National Center for Disability Journalism gives me a chance to do some things differently

April 13, 2011 – 6:44 pm

After a personal 62-year journey, it was a paraplegic woman named Jennifer Longdon who finally made me take my disability responsibilities seriously.

Jennifer’s story is a tough one to read and if you follow her twitter account @jenniferlongdon, it hasn’t gotten any easier in recent weeks. That twitter feed for the last three months is as mesmerizing as any novel I’ve ever read. It was a Jennifer tweet, or a series of tweets, that made me sad, angry and responsible in a blinding flash.

Let’s back up.

I was 42 or so before I finally checked the box on the form that designated me as dealing with some sort of disability. I had spent the first years of my life denying that my Arthrogriposis Multicongenita made me any different from anyone else.

I learned to walk at 18 months in plaster of Paris casts. I had 13 surgeries before I was 16 years old. My right arm is mostly decorative. I have walked with a profound limp all my life. Yet, the words handicapped or disabled were never acceptable to me.

I wasn’t in a wheelchair. I was mobile. I could play flag football, albeit badly. I didn’t work construction but I could do any job that required me to think.

I spent much of my adolescence trying to prove to everyone I was normal. I damn near killed myself with reckless behavior trying to prove I was just like everybody else.

Even as my body began to break down with age and too much weight, I resisted handicapped parking decals and any other admission of personal frailty until I was past 50. Through that decade, arthritis ate away at my ankles until I decided something had to be done. I detailed in a blog post in October my decision to have an ankle joint fusion, the difficulties that followed, and the knee stroller and electric cart that were required.

That experience made me far more sensitive to the way the American Disability Act falls far short of solving the problem. Still, I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to do much to get involved in helping the disabled and journalists covering disability issues.

Then the Jennifer Longdon tweets slammed me over the head.

Jennifer participated in Ignite Phoenix. This link explains the program well, but this video of Jennifer’s performance explains it even better. If you watch it your tears and laughter are going to get mixed up into one dramatic and confused mess. It is brilliant.

The tweet that changed my attitude forever followed that presentation. It read like this:

“Lack of wheelchair access @ #ignitephx after party like being stood up 4 prom. Broke my heart. Truly. Please patronize iruna for kindess 2 me”

This tweet followed:”wish I could be there to see. Heartbroken that after party is not wheelchair accessible.”

I was at home following this on Twitter. I was beside myself with anger and frustration. This woman had invested her entire being in this event and she could not celebrate at the after party because it wasn’t wheelchair accessible.

I was clearly more angry than Jennifer. A day or two later she tweeted this:”Wanna say LOUD AND CLEAR, that I am grateful to every member of the #ingitephx team for a WOW experience. Glitches happen, you were great.” I was blown away by her graciousness but just as blown away that our society does not have a place for all of us.

That is when I accepted Kristin Gilger’s 15 month-old invitation to join the National Center for Disability Journalism. That center moved to the Cronkite School in 2009 and Kristin immediately asked me to join the board. I demurred for months.

I had still struggled with whether I was “handicapped enough.” I didn’t really feel called to help the center educate journalists on disabilities and journalism.

Jennifer Longdon’s rebuff at that after party changed that. I warned Kristin that while I accepted her invitation to join the board I was now a “born again” on disabilities and on the need to enlighten society on the challenges disabled folks face.

I am convinced most people believe the American Disabilities Act fixed everything. It did not. Sure, the sidewalk curbs are gone and public pedestrian access is improved, but people in wheelchairs still must climb mountains of challenges every day.

This I believe: Journalism changes minds and it changes society.

The National Center for Disability Journalism can enlighten and educate journalists that the ADA has not addressed all of the challenges disabled people face.

Thanks to the courage of Jennifer Longdon I finally have confidence I can be an effective part of that process.

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By admin | Posted in Journalism education, Media ethics, Reflection | Comments (1)

"After Cronkite" addresses a genuine problem graduating students face

April 7, 2011 – 5:16 pm

About 15 months ago, a Spring 2009 Cronkite School graduate named Alyssa Aalmo dropped by my office to say hello. She had been out in the work world for about six months. Alyssa looked at me plaintively and said "Tim we need more help negotiating the real world! This has been horrible."

She had my my complete attention! As we talked, the public relations graduate spoke of what a rude awakening she’d had trying to get a job. She said she felt academically prepared, but "real life" snuck up on her. She told me that many of her contemporaries felt the same way.

Alyssa walked out my door but not out of my memory. As I talked to students past and present I picked up more of the same vibe. Students felt unprepared to find a job, settle into an "adult" life and navigate the work place.

As I shared my findings with colleagues locally and nationally I found a curious split reaction. Some were sympathetic with the students’ plight and talked about how difficult this new world is to survive. But others scoffed. Nobody had worried about her own entry into the workplace. The clear implication was this is a coddled generation.

I really didn’t care about that discussion. The world our students must contend with is so incredibly different than the one I faced in 1971, comparisons are silly. Complexity and competition has increased exponentially in those 40 years, but I have to admit I could have used more help in finding an initial landing place. Those first 30 rejection letters are fun to joke about now, but they hurt like hell then.

Late last summer I decided the Cronkite School owed our graduates more than just a great education. I sat down at my computer and created a draft of a program to help students land and keep a job and to adjust to "life after Cronkite." That draft is very similar to the final plan we adopted for this semester.

Dean Chris Callahan and Associate Dean Kristin Gilger loved the idea. They both shot back memos that said "let’s do this, it’s a wonderful idea."

That’s where things got sticky as they often do with great ideas. Sloth became a factor for me. I made it clear I did not want to "own and produce" the idea. Chris and Kristin were fully engaged through the summer and fall with the ACEJMC Accreditation self-study. The idea languished, but there was always one dedicated supporter for the idea-Alyssa Aalmo. She knew her suggestion to me was a good one. She knew that she didn’t want future students to struggle the same way she did. So, she kept politely jabbing me with emails and then she started in on Kristin.

In late November with the self-study mostly out of the way Kristin "owned" the project. With help from our program staff of Kelli Solomkin and Katie Burke, Kristin brought the concept to life.

On Friday Feb. 4 the first session kicked off with a series of brown bag no-credit lunches. That first session was entitled "Know Thyself! Now Tell Others." It was aimed at helping students determine who they are, what they want to do and how they tell the world.

Other sessions, with several different moderators, explained the current business environment and advised students how they can fit in, addressed resume writing, networking and how to survive the interview. Another session discussed the wisdom of waiting for the perfect job versus settling for something less than that. My favorite session is titled “You Mean Mom’s not Going to Do That for Me Anymore?” The clear answer is, no she’s not. That means students need to know something about health and car insurance, budgets, savings, credit, how to set up residency in another state and how to figure out living arrangements.

The attendance has been less than we hoped, right around a dozen students for each session. Clearly our biggest problem is Friday. Cronkite, like most journalism schools, is pretty empty on Friday. We will consider moving the brownbag lunches to another day next year.

We have three sessions left. (The remaining schedule can be found here.) But I have promised students Friday April 8 is going to be the show-stopper session of the entire program. That’s because Alyssa Aalmo will appear. She is going to wow students. I know because she wowed me.

Alyssa is prepared to convey some tough truths to students about their internships, professors versus bosses, the importance of workplace language and scores of other issues. Her lessons from her first year in the workplace would shame a lot of managers.

Journalism education is struggling for definition these days. I am personally convinced the Cronkite education is without peer. I am also convinced it is not enough. As educators and professional survivors, I think we have an ethical duty to equip our students for the workplace in ways classes just can’t do.

At 12:30 p.m. Friday we will continue to do our part, but we could never have done it without the persistence of Alyssa Aalmo and the organizational skills of Associate Dean Kristin Gilger, Kelli Solomkin and Katie Burke.

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By admin | Posted in Journalism education, Leadership and Management, Reflection | Comments (0)

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"After Cronkite" addresses a genuine problem graduating students face

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