Embracing Failure

Thoughts on Day One.
So ... I'm back in my very comfortable hotel room (small yet comfortable), reflecting on the day's lessons from the KDMC Technology Training Workshop for Reporters. Though I am the only journalism professor in the room (as a trainee), I still feel very much like a reporter -- which is a very good thing in my mind. I was a reporter for most of my career, and that is the way I continue to view myself, even though I am entering my fifth year as an academic. Anyway, I digress. The point of this entry is to share some of my ah-ha moments from my afternoon at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, located in a quaint, wood-shingled building at the north end of campus. The biggest lesson I learned today has got to be that some people in the industry I love -- Journalism -- are not quite prepared for change. They are still hoping that our business will remain the same -- in the sense that good storytelling -- not fancy media components -- will attract and keep readers coming back to the product.

For years, I have wanted to believe in this concept -- to teach good writing as the cornerstone of good Journalism. But I now see that we'll have to do more than just string words of accurate and fair words together on a page. We'll have to change ... with the times. We'll have to do more than just write, or take photos. We'll have to understand graphics, design, headlines, teasers, photo sharing -- elements that used to be handled in a newsroom by lots of different people, not just one person.We'll have to learn how to collect and interpret data -- create websites and web pages that will keep people coming back for more -- and staying longer. That's what I plan to learn this week -- how to collect and gather information from databases and put it together in such a way that users will click on the story -- and read it, at least for a while.

The interactive maps shared by the afternoon speaker, a friendly guy named Matt Chittum, reminded me of the maps I check out everyday at www.movoto.com to find out where the cheapest homes are located in the Bay Area. While I get the point about news outlets needing to come up with interactive maps to attract the attention of users and keep them coming back ... I don't quite get how this is different from the maps already provided by various companies on the web, very few of them having little to do with news. In other words, how do we compete with the online sites that are already out there?

I'm not sure if there is a simple answer, but I'll certainly be asking a variety of folks this week as I go through the workshop.

One thing is certain. We in the business need to get with the times -- and start offering readers/users/viewers a variety of ways to get their news. As one of our keynote speakers, Paul Saffo: We need to embrace change if we are going to succeed in the media business. It's changing -- with or without us. As an academic, I had sensed this to be true, but as a journalist, I know how hard it is to have this conversation with the people who work in the business.

Anyway ... these are just some initial thoughts. Even though the news might seem depressing, I am actually encouraged by what I've heard so far. More to come!