The Supreme Court ruled in Hazelwood that high school principals have power to control student newspaper content.  I have heard and seen references that many newspaper editorials endorsed the decision. A quick Google search yields little, but I do know that as I’ve talked to high school journalists, teachers and advocates over the years, I have found the the failure of the national press to rise up in support of high school journalism damned difficult to explain. It then became impossible to explain as high school journalism eroded. There are lots of reasons for that erosion, but Hazelwood is clearly one. Student press advocates like the tireless Mark Goodman, the former director of the Student Press Law Center, have criticized Hazelwood for years. Neither the press nor the courts have really listened.

The bugles are blowing again. To attempt to redeem itself for its ignorance and sloth on Hazelwood, the mainstream press needs to rally to protect and defend the Medill Innocence Project.

Cook County prosecutors are attempting to investigate the Medill Innocence Project. Northwestern students working on the project say they have uncovered evidence that exonerates a man named Anthony McKinney, who has spent 31 years in prison for murder. The Innocence Project has exonerated people before and this time the prosecutors have decided to shoot the messenger by subpoenaing the “grades and grading criteria, evaluations of student performance, expenses incurred during the inquiry, the syllabus, e-mails, unpublished student memos, and interviews not conducted on the record, or where witnesses weren’t willing to be recorded,” according to a story from the Chicago Tribune.

The scope of that request is obviously broad, but I was most intrigued by this sentence: “Among the issues the prosecutors need to understand better, a spokeswoman said, is whether students believed they would receive better grades if witnesses they interviewed provided evidence to exonerate Mr. McKinney. “

I have a 20-year-old law degree. I have never practiced law a day in my life. With that meager background, I have always believed that law enforcement needed a reason to believe something.  That quote does not indicate the prosecutors have any evidence that The Innocence Project students believed they would get better grades. One must wonder if the prosecutors were hanging around Starbucks spit balling ideas when they came up with this dandy idea. That’s not how the law works.  You have to have cause to believe something.

One does not have to be paranoid or an adept sleuth to think the prosecutors are intimidating an organization that has been a pain for them in the past. At the center of this argument is the question of whether these students are journalists or “investigators.” The New York Times  said, ” In their quest, prosecutors have raised a central question about the role of the students — suggesting that they should be viewed as an “investigative agency,” not journalists, whose unpublished materials could, under certain circumstances, be protected under a state statute.” How about we just call them investigative journalists and get the heck out of Dodge?

This case is getting attention, I don’t deny that. The Twittersphere seems active and angry. This conservative Northwestern alum is wonderfully eloquent on the need to protect the Medill Innocence program. And, both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune have done significant pieces. I don’t think it’s enough.

The major voices and organizations in the industry need to speak out, write briefs and raise holy hell about this witch hunt by Cook County prosecutors. Every advocate for good journalism needs to see this case really matters. Each university clinic program in America from Cronkite News Service, to  Cronkite’s four day-a-week Newswatch to the Innocence Project to scores of others need the protection from harassment that is afforded journalists. Increasingly, the industry and scholars are recognizing the crucial role these university efforts might play in the future of journalism. These operations are led by dedicated, talented professionals and those clinic programs usually attract the very best students.

Their great work IS journalism, no argument needed. The bullies who want to hamstring great student journalism need to be stopped.  God bless John Lavine, the Medill Dean, for standing strong against the misguided prosecutors, but Lavine and the Medill Innocence Project need editorial support and the voices of the big journalism guns to close down this brazen attempt at usurping a free press. If I can figure out the best place to donate a couple of bucks, I’m going to do that, too.

Hazelwood is a blot on the proud journalistic record of fighting for press freedoms.  Let’s not let the Northwestern Innocence project case become another.

As early as 1996 Sherry Turkle called  this strange time between the industrial age and the digital age.”the liminal moment.” Turkle even went on to say that the “flux” we live in may be permanent.

I’ve been thinking about this “betwixt and between” moment we all struggle with to one degree or another as I’ve read about recent developments in the newspaper business.

Continuing his tremendous contributions to understanding the eroding newspaper business,  Rick Edmonds argues $1.6 billion in news coverage has been lost annually.  Edmonds calls it a “back-of-the envelope calculation,” but it certainly is not a shocking number when you consider the decimation we’ve witnessed in the last few years. 

One of those newspapers that has been cutting product is apparently changing directions. The Dallas Morning News is now exploring “premium pricing.” Their concept is to add back some coverage and staff to the newspaper. They will then test the boundaries of pricing by experimenting with how much customers are willing to pay for that improved coverage. I’ve always liked the automobile analogy McClatchy Newspapers CEO Gary Pruitt used in the “good old days.” He would mock newspapers for cutting staff and coverage and compare it to auto manufacturers discontinuing fenders and bumpers. This Dallas move has a whiff of adding back fenders and bumpers and now charging extra for them.

At the same time, David Brauer of MinnPost reports the Star Tribune is “smushing” its Saturday street-stand edition with its Sunday bullldog edition. The paper will drop its Saturday street-stand edition and combine that news, along with the Sunday advance package, to create a more powerful early Sunday edition and thus raising the Sunday circulation number. This is not a new thought. I remember discussing it years ago at the Star Tribune, but in those days our Sunday number was very strong. We worried about our daily number and lowering the street-stand sales of Saturday will seemingly damage that number. That said, considering the new reality about daily and Sunday numbers, this decision makes sense if you are are content to work these problems around the edges.

And that is the point. The sorts of moves we are seeing in Dallas and Minneapolis present examples of the very tough choices newspaper publishers face in this “Schumpeterian” moment. It is a choice I am relieved I don’t have to face. How much of yesterday should we destroy as we “create” tomorrow?  These moves feel like band-aids when the terrible wound to the business model is gushing.

I have issues with the pace of destruction some folks are predicting, but when an expert like Jeff Jarvis is exploring new models for news you have to respect his team’s willingness to change the assumptions.

I try to insure my students understand the significance when management guru Clayton Christensen talks about sustaining innovations and disruptive innovations. Sustaining innovations are about “designing better mousetraps” for a continuing business.  That seems to be what the moves in Dallas and Minneapolis are. Disruptive innovations are separate strategies that tend to blow up the existing business model creating new products and new markets.

Sustaining innovations like the ones in Dallas and Minneapolis are not to be mocked. The question the industry has to face is whether this is a time to stay the course with sustaining innovations, or is it time to disrupt the hell out of the business we all loved the way it was?

Translated, what the baby boomers are really saying is that students “don’t know what I know and that makes me mad!” Never mind that students know so much more than boomers knew at 19.  Their world is so much more complex and technology driven. There are lots of scientists who tell us that technology is increasing exponentially. It’s hard to nail down specifics, but knowledge seems to double somewhere around every eight years.  And we get upset because young people might not know about Watergate or Doris Day? Come on baby boomers get a life.

My kindergarten granddaughter can describe, in some specific detail, the life cycle of a caterpillar and a butterfly. Maybe, maybe my sophomore high school biology class covered that!  We have to come to grips with the fact that students are exposed to more, know more and can do more than we can.

It always surprises me that boomers can lose their cool over the fact that a teenager doesn’t know about Vietnam, yet they don’t think twice about the fact that the first time their computer hiccups they scream for the young person’s help. We need to find perspective here and respect what young people know and not focus on what they don’t know.

That’s why teachers exist. We need to lend perspective, historical context and insight to the intriguing, challenging world our students must navigate. We can’t do that if we disrespect them or that new world.  I am not a huge fan of Facebook or Twitter or even Mashable.com. Despite that lack of enthusiasm I engage with all of them because it is my responsibility to understand and engage in the world as it is, not as I’d like it to be.

The basic rules of our economy and our society are changing. Consumers are now in control, not centralized institutions like The Republic, Time or Newsweek.  Knowledge and power are now “distributed” and every 19-year-old with a computer has a power that is frightening to us boomers.  Important books like What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis and Wikinomics by Donald Tapscott and Anthony Williams show us how this changing world is going to leave the people who are stuck in the past, well, stuck in the past.  Jarvis talks about  focusing on talent versus tenure and the fact that new rules of commerce are going to be created, like it or not.

Snarling about young people not respecting history is not going to stop this revolution that is turning institutions on their heads and making the secure corporations of the past  an object in our rear view mirror that is smaller than it appears. Young people ask me all the time,”If big media corporations don’t exist anymore, what am I supposed to do?”

My answer to them is loud, insistent and consistent.  Sell yourself. Build your own personal brand. I tell students to become experts in the thing they have a passion for and then market that expertise with a blog, with Twitter and with a responsible Facebook page. I tell them to take advantage of every internship and every meeting with an important person. I urge them to keep that contact file bursting with people who can help them.  I want them to build networks of like-minded people with whom they they can collaborate and create.

Then I circle back and  I emphasize the responsible part of that Facebook account. I exhort young people to realize Facebook and Myspace and every other social media site are not private! I passionately counsel them that these social sites are just as much a part of their personal brand as their internships and blogs. The difference is a rowdy Saturday night captured on a cell phone and distributed on Facebook can stop a career before it gets started. A few hours of immature fun can destroy that personal brand. A lot of baby boomers, like me, should cringe at the thought of some of the things we did being captured by a cell phone camera.

Young people are smart.  Many of them, if not most,  know a lot more than we did and than we do now. Baby boomers need to open their minds to that reality. At the same time young people need to invest in selling themselves and in creating that personal brand.

I think Melvin is saying ESPN loves newspapers and if we kick their ass, it’s just the environment, not us.

ESPN.com Chicago and ESPN.Boston are genuine threats to newspapers as the biggest, most powerful  brand in sports marches across America. (ESPN. Dallas/Fort Worth debuted yesterday) Sports has been an under appreciated asset of newspapers for a long time. Too many editors looked on sports as a necessary evil. My roots are in sports, but all I needed was two World Series titles in Minneapolis to show me the power of sports to sell newspapers and draw online viewers. 

I’ve been saying for months now, the way I’d fight the publishing cutbacks in Detroit would be with a combination web/print sports product. I have felt for some time now the newspaper sports web sites are way too hard to navigate. Sports should be the centerpiece of newspaper efforts to rejuvenate themselves. I have been very wishy-washy about pay walls. I’ve gradually moved toward thinking they are bad idea. I am convinced they are a horrible idea for sports unless the added value is phenomenal. (I should point out ESPN adds that value with ESPN Insider) With all the competition for sports fans, I think that super-high level added value is going to be tough to find. I have always believed sports is central to building community, which most newspapers say is the key task.  Sports may also be the major link to mass for a lot of newspapers too.

Now is the time to boost sports coverage for newspapers, not shrink it or put it behind pay walls.  I do think the proposed alliance by several regional newspapers is great idea and I am thrilled my favorite sports editor, Glen Crevier, is at the center of it.  That alliance can allow newspapers to avoid duplication on events like the Masters. The real future of local sports for a newspaper like The Star Tribune lies in covering the Vikings, Twins and even the lowly Timberwolves better than any current or future competitor.

A FEW DAYS AGO I read the second entry of the new Ombudsman column on ESPN. I never made any bones about the excellence of Le Anne Schreiber the former occupant of the job. I thought her ethics discussions were worth the price of admission.  I still have to say I was blown away by Don Ohlmeyer’s column on the three-man booth. It  was part history, part analysis, and a really good part education. I’ve been recommending the column to anyone interested in broadcast. And for a TV guy, Ohlmeyer can write. Check this one out: “Tumbling out of “Chucky” is a zest for the game, a competitor’s heart and a storyteller’s soul.”

I really resonated with Ohlmeyer’s criticism that the voices of Ron Jaworski and John Gruden sound too much alike. “With ESPN’s new trio, there’s no confusing the analysts with the play-by-play, but often my ears had difficulty distinguishing between Gruden and Jaworski — except when Jaws reverts to his “Philadelphia” pronunciations. It’s a technical trick, but that need for distinction could be addressed, potentially, by an audio equalizer putting more bass in one voice and more treble in the other.” Wow, let’s hit that treble button guys! I love insightful stuff like that. 

I got a kick out of this historical reference. “In addition, there must be distinctive points of view. With Gifford-Cosell-Meredith, there was no question about perspective. Frank, always the optimist, thought most everything about the league was terrific. Dandy Don thought the players were gladiators, and the owners rascals. Howard, cynical by nature, thought the whole mess corrupt — except for the things that met with his approval. “

Now it is true, as one of my friends mentioned, that a lot of people thought that early crew was way too clownish to call a game, but I thought Ohlmeyer addressed that when he talked about the importance of an announcing crew “letting the broadcast breathe.”

That Ohlmeyer piece could form the spine of a great play-by-play course.

SINCE I AM WRITING about ESPN it seemed a good time to mention my favorite Tuesday morning guilty pleasure. I cannot miss reading Pat Forde, a former newspaper scribe, who writes a wonderful column every Tuesday called The Forde Yard Dash.  Get it? Forty yard dash? A knee slapper to be sure and it is just like the old days when newspapers columnist used hopeless puns on their names to title their columns.

Despite that little self-indulgence, Forde uses 40 proper nouns to entertain, inform and wise-crack about college football.  He is irreverent, but not stick-it-in-your-eye disrespectful. He can really turn a phrase, and I walk away amused and smarter. It’s what sports journalism needs to be in 2009–information with some attitude.

(For the ethics crowd I have this disclosure: My son works at ESPN in Bristol as a production assistant.) 

Tapping the brakes seems like a great idea to me when we have so many gurus telling us that a week from Thursday newspapers will be, or should be, all online. Jeff Jarvis, a really smart, albeit controversial guy, tells us  that in a number of ways. Eric Clemons, another smart guy, says advertising has failed on the Internet and something must be found to replace it.

There are all sorts of dire predictions almost daily on Twitter and Mashable and there are specific analyses from wise people like Clay Shirky that newspapers are dying and on the brink of death.

I know I am entering the lion’s mouth here. I will be accused of all sorts of heinous crimes from naivete to stupidity, to co-habitation with the dinosaurs, but I want to introduce the idea that the people I call the “left-wing technologists” might be leading us too far, too fast. These people I call “left-wing technologists” (I do not mean the political left-wing, but rather very progressive) are smart as hell–a lot smarter than me. They have vision and technical knowledge that far outstrips mine. These wise people make early adopters look like slowpokes. They are way out in front on technological thinking. My concern is that they create their own “bubble” in which they honestly believe everybody is running at the same pace they are. It is kind of a “technological Beltway.” I wonder how many real people live there.

I know a ton of baby boomers whose eyes would glaze over if they heard the descriptions of the present and the near-future that the gurus represent. But using baby boomers as an example might be considered cheap because they are so “yesterday.” So allow me to use an example featuring the younger generation–the digital natives. I use it as an illustration and not as scientific proof of any point.

Clemons writes this ( the links are his) in his piece on the failure of advertising: “And mostly consumers do not need advertising. My own research suggests that consumers behave as if they get much of their information about product offerings from the Internet, through independent professional rating sites like dpreview.com or community content rating services like Ratebeer.com or TripAdvisor.” 

Okay, so Clemons argues advertising has failed because consumers, presumably especially younger consumers, rely on professional ratings systems rather than advertisers. On Wednesday, I taught my Business and Future of Journalism class at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism from Clemons material,  including that specific quote. Suddenly, with that slide up on the screen, being the aware professor I hope to heaven I am, I saw confusion and skepticism on the faces of way too many of my 46 Journalism majors in the class. On a whim, I stopped and asked how many students had heard of those sites mentioned by Clemons.  Not a single one of the “net natives” had heard of all three and only eight had heard of at least one. Whoa!

That’s when I stopped and put out my “left-wing technologist” idea that there are a lot of technologically savvy experts who see a future coming faster than perhaps it really is because the public is not ready to “adopt” technology at the predicted fast pace. The students agreed with the thought.  One bright young man seemed to speak for the class when he said that so many people think that students climb all over the web all the time.  He said he knew very few people like that.  Now one student in the class did say he roams the web all the time and loves it. However, most students agreed with the contention that the Internet obsession of the young gets seriously overdone. Again, this isn’t scientific, it’s as random as you can get. Clemons research is obviously superior, but I think my anecdotal discovery tells us we need to continue the research.

The point is a lot of Internet gurus are making a lot of money by being gurus. Predicting a fast-paced route to tomorrow is in their best interests. These authors and critical thinkers are crucial to today’s debate about the future of journalism, but let’s not confuse that value with some magical ability to see into the future.  When I think of authors “seeing the future” I am reminded of a book named The Long Boom: A Vision of the Coming Age of Prosperity.  The premise of that book published in 2001 was that the United States faced nothing but a booming economy for the next 20 or 25 years.  Oops.

I do not bring up that book to mock but rather to illustrate that you will read a lot of predictions these days.  A lot of those opinions will be very strongly held.  Accept and reject those creative thoughts and opinions judiciously.  Study what the futurists write. Integrate their best thoughts into your planning and your actions. Don’t make anything you read a bible that dictates some sort of theological construct especially when you are thinking about technological predictions.

Today Eric Black, who from my personal experience is the smartest man in most every room he enters, writes a wonderful piece on MinnPost.com about  the direction journalism should take. He quotes and links to a CJR piece by Brent Cunningham. Both men write about the courage required  to make journalism work.

Those are the kind of pieces we need to consider, at least as much as the predictive technology pieces.  Pieces like Black’s  and Cunningham’s allow us to “tap on the brakes” and attend to the things in the here and now that can make journalism work.

Frustrated, this summer I decided to write a guide to writing material for a non-profit with a message to spread. When I looked around the Internet all I found were references to books on public relations writing.  I did not find an easy guide like this one below. Sophisticated readers will see there’s not a lot of original stuff  in my list of suggestions.  It draws on 40 years of experience with great writers at newspapers, a lot of reading and a lot of trial and error.  Students of writing will see a little bit of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, a little Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and, of course, chunks of Elements of Style which I just discovered is 50 years old! 

I wrote this list in hopes it would guide writers at the retreat center, and with some hopes it might help others teach peers in organizations how to make their messages stronger and better read.

I have been meaning to share these thoughts on my blog for a few weeks, but my friend Marianne Barrett, the Senior Associate Dean here at the Walter Cronkite School, catalyzed my thinking this week when she handed me a a copy of Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.

I am only 35 pages into the book, but I am hooked. The book has perhaps the most arresting opening I’ve ever read in a non-fiction book. The book is about what’s called “stickiness,” but don’t be fooled. This book is definitely about writing.

According to the Heaths, the six principles of stickiness are Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions and Stories. Stare at that list. Those are the essential elements of great storytelling and communication. Hand those six principles to any journalist, storyteller or public relations writer and you have every right to expect a great result. 

I urge you to read the book, but if you add those six elements to this list I wrote for Casa communications I think even novice writers can produce effective writing.

Tim McGuire’s thoughts of writing messages for the Casa

What is my purpose? Why am I writing this message? Do I need something done? Do I need to inform about something? Do I want contributions of time, treasure or talent? Do I want people to better understand the Casa and what it stands for? Do I want to instruct? Do I want to energize or instill passion? The more specific I can be about my purpose the better the message will read. That purpose needs to guide the entire text.

Who is my audience? There is a big difference between writing a press release for public consumption, writing a letter to our congregation and requesting the help of the wealthiest individuals in our congregation. Right after you clarify purpose you need to clarify audience. Audience determines message and tone and even the facts and data you include. The more concrete the idea you have in your mind about the audience the more intimate, personal and effective you can make your message. I often try to visualize the people for whom I am writing. That can free me up to be personal and truly connect with my reader.

How does this communication fit into the context of my overall communication strategy? Is this a one-shot message? Or, is it the first of a series of fund-raising or informational messages? Most of our messages cannot be viewed in an isolated context, but too often we write them that way. We need to understand how our particular message fits into strategy, mission and project. One of the most important elements of this is to make sure we have buy-in from all the stakeholders. I think our messages would be much stronger if stakeholders weighed in on purpose, audience and context and then left the writing to one person. Editing messages by committee seldom yields a good result. And yet, most of the important input can be accounted if each stakeholder answers these first three questions.

What is the correct tone based on purpose and audience? There are few worse sins than humor in a very serious message or seriousness in an invitation to a fun event. Before you begin carefully consider tone and manner. Decide on levels of formality and intimacy. Keep a consistent tone throughout the message.

Can you find a powerful and an engaging hook? A hook is an engaging opening or a device to engage the audience and make them give a hoot! If I have a strong hook at the beginning I like to maintain it throughout the message and especially come back to it at the end. I have noticed too often that the hook does not have much to do with the message. Do not contrive your hook. Don’t let it become phony, routine or cliched.

What is the right length and what kind of emphasis should I place on data? I hate to say always, but almost always, I think our messages need to be short and tight. If I have narrowed my purpose appropriately I should be able to get my message across succinctly and get out of Dodge. There is often a temptation to include a lot of data in our messages. We should be very stingy about that simply because people find a lot of facts and numbers hard to read. However, there are some messages where communicating data IS the purpose. In those cases we need to think about bullets and other devices that make the data easier to read and digest.

All of these questions lead to an admonition: Keep it simple! Your task as a writer is to communicate and explain complex stuff you understand to an audience that not only doesn’t understand the issues as well as you do but they don’t care nearly as much as you do. Your task is to make them care simply and powerfully. Think of your writing as an easy-going conversation. That means simple short sentences. Avoid complex clauses. Keep commas and semi-colons to a minimum. Keep explanations simple. Do not try to impress people with your vocabulary. Keep words simple and powerful. Use active verbs. Avoid forms of the verb “to be” whenever possible. I leaped across the room is always more powerful than I have crossed the room. The greatest punctuation mark in the English language is the period. Go read some Hemingway to get a fine reminder of that fact.

Finally, deeply consider an outline. I have been writing, some say fairly effectively, for over 40 years. I use an outline 60-70 percent of the time. It allows me to answer all the above questions. It allows me to get a handle on the most important issues and the best organization of those issues.

My world did not shake. My emotional moorings remain sound. Social media and I have gotten along just fine. My kindergarten granddaughter reading her first Junie B. Jones book cover to cover was a much bigger deal for me.  So was my three-year-old grandson conquering potty training. Those are the strong human events that have recently touched me and Twitter has not been even a small part of that crucial, visceral life–until 5:01 PDT Wednesday. At that moment I realized the real value of Twitter is human connection at the most basic level. That’s because Patrick died.

I don’t even know Patrick’s last name, but his death brought me to tears and pissed me off. A 16-year-old kid shouldn’t have to suffer the way I know he did. The Tweet that changed my perspective about Twitter looked like this.

stevebuttry Our precious nephew Patrick’s struggle ended today. Thanks to all who supported us and prayed for him. We had him for 16 wonderful years.

With that, a months-long saga reached a sad, inevitable conclusion. Throughout the ordeal, Steve Buttry who has become a friend in the last 18 months or so, kept his “followers” apprised of Patrick’s comebacks and setbacks through AML leukemia and a March bone marrow transplant. It is hard to tell a dramatic story of life and death in 140 characters, but Steve did it repeatedly. I did not realize how well Steve had done it until Wednesday afternoon when Patrick passed. I was profoundly shaken. I had become a part of Patrick’s battle and his family’s battle.  Hell, I was part of his family because of Twitter.

Over the last several months when my social media averse friends mocked Twitter I have kept silent. When my Twitter obsessed friends talked about how their lives have changed I smiled politely.  I have simply not found it worth debating whether Twitter has put mainstream journalism under siege.  The innovative efforts to see if Twitter can be journalism have intrigued me without convincing me.

I found myself empathetic with OnlineMarketerblog.com. The author there wrote: “On one side, many journalists don’t buy the trend toward social media and have their heads firmly entrenched in the sand. They believe in their readership’s loyalty and claim that social media is a passing fad. One the other side, other journalists have fully embraced the social media tools at their disposal and go so far as to trumpet the death of journalism. They expect newspapers to close up shop; the death knell of print news is a symphony of tweets.”

I have thought those debates overwrought and I agreed with that same author’s conclusions: “Personally, I believe they are both wrong. Some newspapers will outlast social media and some have already been taken down by it. The basic truth is that some people love getting their news from social media like Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed, while others will never replace their tangible newspaper-with-coffee routine.”

That author seems right on to me and I’ve been a bit bewildered why we all can’t just get along. In my mind Twitter is just an interim step along the way toward a radical shift of power from publishers to community. I have not seen why we have to choose sides and beat the enemy into submission.

The New York Times’ Roger Cohen this week wrote what I found to be a fairly lucid, rational opinion about what Journalism is and what Twitter and other social media aren’t.. I especially liked this: “Technology has enriched journalism by expanding the means to deliver it and the raw material on which it is based. But technology has also diminished the incentive — and the revenue — to get out of the office. Understanding without the trained “view from the ground” (Martha Gellhorn) remains impossible. Nature abhors a vacuum, journalism even more so, and so it fills absence with windiness.”

I think that makes an important point without diminishing the contribution of social media.  But my friend Steve Buttry saw it differently and tweeted this. “stevebuttry: Cohen says Twitter isn’t journalism. It’s news source & journalism tool. & his arrogant whining isn’t good journalism.

I think we diminish social media and journalism by insisting that one or another be the King of the Hill. In April Brian Solis wrote something important for TechCrunch: “The socialization of the web is powered by not only the ability for citizens to publish and share content, but also the wherewithal and associated rewards for connecting with the real people and the personalities with whom we follow. This is paramount as publishers and journalists can learn from the ongoing documentation in the art and science of online community building.”

Journalists have been dedicated to telling dramatic stories about the human struggle since the first printing press rolled. Triumphs, struggles, failures and profound disappointments form the fabric of life and great journalists communicate that reality with power and strength. 

I discovered Wednesday that Twitter can connect me to a 16-year-old boy I never met. Twitter can make me feel Patrick’s loss deeply. Journalists scoff at that deep human connection at their peril.

If you are like me, the phrase that defines my student’s note and screams out is, “even after they were repeatedly asked not to by family and others.” For so many people following this controversy, including Robert Gates, that family request should have stopped publication.  Gates was quoted as writing to AP,  “Why your organization would purposely defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple newspapers is appalling.”

This case is great evidence why journalistic publications in pursuit of news and bent on showing truth are never going to be friends with government, and even some of the public. It’s why business model discussions which might sacrifice real independence scare the heck out of me. I know there are people who feel the anger of this Associated Content commentator, but the contention that AP transmitted this photo in the pursuit of money displays such an incredible lack of understanding of how news works, it is staggering. 

I must admit I find the photo hard to read. It is not one of those photos that communicates in  one blink like the Napalm girl and the execution photo that arguably ended the Vietnam War. The photo is more subtle and requires definite work from the audience. That said it does communicate powerfully. I think we need to consider if its chief problem is it features a dying American. That may be the unfortunate difference here in the way we react. 

I was surprised at how many editors refused to run the photo.  I was particularly interested that neither of the Twin Cities papers ran with it. David Brauer was nicely balanced in his approach to the subject, but I found him uncharacteristically reserved in his judgement until his closing paragraph: “The wire-service treatment was not sensational, and served far larger civic interests. The public sees too few examples of the horror of war, and that lack of reality causes bigger problems down the road. Next time, at least one local news leader should be bolder.”

Brauer nailed it, politeness and all. As much as we want to be compassionate, news outlets cannot let the family make the call and the government request should not be decisive in any way. My personal opinion is this war has been sanitized far too much as it is. Wars continue until they disturb the public. The two wars our country is fighting now have not appalled enough people to end them.  News media hiding photos like this one is not in the interest of open and healthy dialogue. I was fascinated that in this story  the AP saved quotes from soldiers who argued the war has been sanitized until the end of the story. 

It is clearly not the news media’s responsibility to take a position on any war. On this day that a memorial service was held in New York City for the namesake of my journalism school, Walter Cronkite, it is important to remember Walter’s famous tag line and paraphrase it only slightly to make it an admonition to that we can live by when we make decisions like this one: “Tell it like it is.”   

The Carnegie-Knight Initiative for college journalists has several goals, but the primary one is to stimulate incubators for innovative approaches to journalism. From what I saw Wednesday, mission accomplished.  The ASU work and the work of other schools breaks new ground in method, style and substance. Yet it is an error to think this is flashy space-age stuff. A long, slow, savoring read will reveal story is central to all the presentations, but so is choice.  Readers have a number of options for how to choose how they want to consume the material. 

I found the Innovation Roundup full of great suggestions for innovating storytellers. Some of the points might seem obvious, but taken as a whole that piece struck me as a solid cookbook for innovation and story-telling.

A lot of graybeards like me are petrified the integrity of the story will be damaged by all these new, high-tech tools and imaginative new methods. They should be reassured by reading the lessons the News 21 folks have learned: get the story first, report in teams, hire developers and put them in newsrooms, understand developers and their tools; hire journalists with basic photography skills etc.  The lessons are worth reading because none of that sets story aside, rather it keeps story central. The students who talked about their work Wednesday stressed that they needed to discipline themselves not to fall in love with their fancy tools, but use those tools to enhance the reading/viewing experience.

Now that is not to say that storytelling has to look like it has for 50 years. The Innovation Roundup enthusiastically  embraces non-linear story-telling. There is a lot of evidence that young people are not particularly taken by a,b, c, storytelling, but rather they embrace chaos. One of the finest young photographers I have seen, a woman named Deanna Dent, displays her pictures and story about the Virgin of Guadalupe in a decidedly non-traditional way. Linear is not even a vague notion. It is a little out there for me, but it can teach editors a lot about this unconventional approach to story-telling.  Do not be put off when you click on it the first time. Conventional media folks may have to stuff their bugged-out eyes back into their heads, but stick with it awhile and I think you will be impressed and intrigued.

For unconventional approaches I became enamored of following my food and its impact on energy, which is the work of The University of North Carolina students. So far, I’d have to say my favorite story in the whole package is Latinos in the Military. It uses great tools and tells a dynamite story with real strong public policy implications. 

Collaboration is the third big lesson the News21 people celebrate. They talk about the importance of working in teams, getting everybody in the same room and working closely with developers. At the ASU site students tell downright heart-warming stories of students crossing from one story to another to bail out colleagues.  In this day of remote offices and telecommuting, Jason Manning and Rick Rodriguez, who directed the ASU project are convinced staffers should come into the office regularly. They said the spontaneous idea factory created by the office presence is indispensable.

Take some time with the News21 site. Bookmark it and go back to it often. You are not going to grasp the fine storytelling or the tremendous potential of the innovation on one visit. There is a lot of clever stuff here that needs to be absorbed if the Carnegie-Knight goal of affecting industry practices and experimentation is going to be realized. Right now you can find a blog here about the processes used. Keep visiting that site because eventually students and their teachers are going to reveal what’s under the hood of the storytelling behind these great examples of journalism innovation. That open-source approach is a great thing about this sort of undertaking.

For my money, Carnegie-Knight, these students and their teachers are teaching professional journalists high-tech tools can help us make journalism and storytelling greater than it has ever been.

The discussion revealed a fascinating chasm between academics and recent professionals.

I want to be very careful not to simplify or sensationalize an incredibly important issue and i don’t want to over -generalize about academics and professionals. Views on the subject varied among professionals and academics. Yet, the gap in understanding and appreciation needs to be explored.

When I share this discussion with professionals they find the answer so obvious they actually guffaw. And yet, when a good academic friend, Joe Russomanno, shared it with a small number of academics they responded they never think about impact. Wow, there’s a gap and it is obvious incredulousness is never going to close it. Rational discussion and exploration might.

Russomanno is as earnest and talented an academic as you’re going to find. He has a solid decade of professional experience and he sees the world as a whole, not through academic-tinted glasses. He has made himself a prominent expert on media law and he is big-league thinker. He does have great experience as a researcher. Before and after Wednesday’s session we have exchanged emails on the subject. I think they set the stage for the debate that I think ought to occur everywhere between academics and professionals even though there probably isn’t anyone who neatly fits into those descriptions.

I start with the premise that in this time of incredible industry crisis academics could play a vital role in finding answers to the challenges facing the industry. In my view that will not happen if academics believe impact is not important.

Russomanno is not naïve and in some ways we both were operating in a devil’s advocate posture. At one point during our faculty discussion I said having impact is part of being human. I contended it is a basic drive we all have as human beings. Joe paraphrased me and responded with this: “That is (Joe’s translation), to publish is to have impact.  Agreed.  My question is not to suggest that research can’t or shouldn’t have impact.  Not at all.  Impact away!  (And I think that’s what a lot of people read into the question.)  Rather, it’s to ask whether (and to what extent) a research product having impact should be on the mind of researchers, particularly in the early stages of a project.  Because if impact is a priority, especially if it is THE priority, that can and likely will affect how the research is conducted.  Some would say that biases the process from the beginning.  And some would say that’s improper, that it compromises the integrity of the process. The project is market driven.  And yet those same people would say that if their research ultimately does have impact, that’s fine, but it’s not their role to seek it.  That’s for others to judge.”

It is obvious that Russomanno and I are struggling with the definition of impact. This was an attempt at definition by Russomanno early in our discussion. “In my mind, I’m equating that with marketability–getting the mainstream media interested in the research.  Is it sell-able?  And to me, that potentially smacks of whoring out the enterprise, or at least aspects of it.  It potentially is a sell out IF impact is the top criterion.  It negatively affects the integrity of the entire process.  It compromises, possibly even to the extent of making the researcher less than independent. Of course, this is not to say that research that happens to have an impact is bad. Nothing of the sort. But should wanting the research to have an impact be a priority? And more importantly, should that desire be allowed to impact the kind of projects that are undertaken? That’s where I’m conflicted.” Joe added later that he is particularly concerned with “researchers who double as their own publicity agents. I believe any judgment about impact should be out of the researcher’s hands.”

My response probably wasn’t as eloquent. I wrote, “I can’t figure out what other measurement other than impact a piece of research might have. If it moves no one, if it advances nothing, and nobody gives a damn why do it? Academics need to talk more and explain better what the measurements are.”

I then moved onto examples. “Let’s look at the hard sciences.  Those researchers are not satisfied if their research sits on shelves. They want to make balls bouncier or cancer treatments less stressful or the orange juice more fortified with vitamins. The hard sciences want to make science and industry better.” I then argued this : “In the same way journalism research should be addressing the very real problems facing industry and craft. Our research should highlight and resolve the problems plaguing the media. Let’s take your field of law. One of the biggest problems facing access and scores of other legal issues is the inability of my industry successors to take on legal cases. There just isn’t money. Research on that phenomenon, studies of the impact of less aggressiveness and exploration of solutions could have incredible impact on society, the industry and freedom of information. That’s the real impact we should explore.” (Russomanno and I are now discussing said research idea and that idea has entered the mainstream media.) 

In my simple journalistic mind I think getting our work noticed by mainstream media IS impact. But to some, being mentioned on Romenesko is a curse. For me, being famous and talked about helps the institution, the school and individual reputations. Publicity beats the hell out of anonymity. More fame, more respect and more buzz intrigues and attracts students, funders and other faculty.  That strikes me as the core of impact. 

I respect Joe Russomanno’s fear that if the researcher focuses on impact it will somehow jaundice the work. I am also impressed with his contention that “I think subconsciously I’ve always taken the view that if someone other than me judges my work and decides that it has an impact, fine.  More than fine.  Great!  But that’s not for me to decide before, during or after conducting the research.”

This articulation by Joe may get to the fundamental problem that gets between professionals and academics: “The small part of me that recoils is the same part of me doesn’t like the pursuit of ratings or circulation numbers driving news content.  The news is the news, right?  Same thinking here:  If some topic or issue is “worth” researching, regardless of its marketability (i.e., “impact”), then it should be pursued.”

After several back and forth emails Joe and I ended up at the word “usefulness.’  He prefers that to impact and I certainly buy that.  

One thing that has struck me over the years about this research conversation Wednesday was a sense of inconsistency on the part of some academics. Some academics say they can’t be bothered by impact and yet I often hear them bellyache that they and their research are not taken seriously. That dog simply does not hunt for me. I think if impact, or at least usefulness is not sought, then people need to be comfortable with being ignored.

I think there is an incredible opportunity for academics “to get noticed’ by the news media industry. Professionals have arguably messed things up quite badly. Academics would seem to have the wherewithal and insight to help find solutions. Those solutions will not come if academics think they are above the fray and that their work does not have to have impact.

As Joe Russomanno said so eloquently, “Impact away!”