Newspapers Need to Get Agressive

A recent post by Mindy McAdams calls for newspapers to quit with the tired old standbys and really get involved in making their publication something the community is interested in.

So here’s an insane, heretical idea for change. The goal is to make everyone in your community start talking about your newspaper and your Web site. You want people asking all their friends and co-workers, “Did you read x this morning?” and “Did you see y on the Web site this afternoon?” You want a woman coming home from work to say to her stay-at-home dad/husband, “I have to show you this thing on the Beacon’s Web site!” You want her to say that even before she asks, “What’s for dinner, honey?”

That’s your goal. How do you get there?

Well, first you have to quit crushing everyone on the staff under stupid stories that no one in your community even cares about.

Second, you have to figure out what people would care about — locally — if only you covered it properly.

Think about it. Most local newspapers are filled with the same routine information to fill space: engagement announcements, obituaries, local club activities, property transfers, board meetings, crime reports, and community events. They're all things that are considered necessary, but not very interesting. It's these never ending stories the MUST be reported that often burden reporters and prevent them from seeking out and reporting other stories.

In order to witch things up, the first plan of action is to gage what the community wants to read. What's important to them? What excites them? What do they need to know? What do they want? The staff would aim to answer these questions by asking. (Duh.)

Ask friends. Ask family. Ask community leaders. Ask the everyday Joe. Ask in as many areas and categories of people as possible. Ask on the street. Ask in the paper. Ask online through a forum, blog, or poll. Really get people involved in the paper. When this happens, the readers get what they want and need, and the paper stays in the black.

I see it at home with my local paper all the time. People pick it up, glance through it, then tos it back. A friend's mother commented the other day that it wasn't interesting at all, and stacked it with the other issues next to the fireplace. Papers that were donated to my JOURNALISM classrooms often went unread, and they were scrapped at the end of the day. And though the paper is trying to branch out online and with video, it's a complete mess. The paper's site is poorly put together, navigation is difficult, and slapped on ads make it unattractive.

Newspapers are a business. You need to create a product that people will want to buy. This means actually getting to know your customer base and creating a quality product catering to them, while captalizing on new technology.

Now I know many journalists are thinking, "Won't following what the public wants compromise journalistic integrity? Won't catering to public whim cause fluff journalism? Will hard news disappear in favor of gossip and fashion advice? Will we all end up chasing celebrities as cheap paparazzi?!" (Duh-duh-dunnnnn!)

Yes, celebrity gossip sells. People in your town may pick up People at the register, but I seriously doubt that they are clamoring for you to report on Britney in the newspaper. People do want news. They want to know what's going on in the world, especially about issues that affect them. And that's the ticket, finding out what affects them and having that information available.

Reason and Emotion Simplified

This is an old WWII video made by Disney illustrating the effects of emotion and reason on a person's actions, and their eventual effects. It also demonstrates this with Hitler's use of emotion that created such enthusiasm for the Third Reich. It's interesting.



I've always liked Disney movies, even now as a grown up kid. As I get older, I find the underlying themes more illuminating. Most movies promote a healthy sense of life.

Death of Newspapers, Dawn of the Internet

So here's the deal: journalists are freaking out.

They're freaking out because newspaper sales are down, way down. Newspaper sales are down because people are shifting more online where news is more accessible. So just move journalism online, right? Print might be dead, but there's money to be had online, right? Well, not exactly. Journalists are still trying to figure out how to make money online. In newspapers, money was made by selling space to advertisers, and the rates were determined by circulation. They also made a bit of money from classifieds and what people paid for the paper itself. Online is bit harder to profit from. Most people are used to getting news for free, so suddenly charging (whether in micropayments for each article or an online subscription) may turn readers away to other sources. Plus, putting articles behind a wall doesn't allow search engines to find them, which further decreases readership. There are advertisements online, but I haven't heard of them garnering much profit. Loss of profits leads to staff cuts. Thus, journalists are freaking out.

As a journalism student, I'm also freaking out... but just a bit.

While I expect newspapers will not completely die off, they will decrease, significantly. Most cities have only one major paper now. Even the lone papers are fighting to stay afloat, from big papers like the Los Angeles Times to my local paper, The News-Enterprise. Many of them are online, and increasing their reporting repetoir by taking video, audio, and creating multimedia pieces.

For me, that means I will have to become a jack of all trades, becoming proficient in photography, as well as audio, video, and writing. I must also expand my knowledge about coding and using visual programs like Final Cut Pro, Flash, and Soundslides. My course schedule reflects that. The PJ program went completely digital (no more film), and has made multimedia and web classes a requirement. Other majors in the journalism department are also branching out. News Ed majors now have to take Basic Photo and Intro to Multimedia.

Ok, so by the time I graduate I will have multiple skills. But the big question is, who is going to hire me? If news gathering organizations have died out because they couldn't make money in print or online, how am I going to work?

In 3-4 years, I expect they will figure it out. Markets adapt. Newspapers may die, but news won't. And citizen journalism certainly won't replace it. Professionals will always be needed to get it right. And newspapers won't become nonprofit organizations, living off donations. It's not practical and quality of reporting would suffer. I'm hopeful. Really, it's just a question of how it will all work out.

Reading up on it, I found some standing orders for journalists so that they can stop lamenting print's demise and move forward.

Here's some suggestions from Mindy McAdams:

1. Journalism CAN be done, and done well, without newspapers. It’s okay if you love newspapers, but they’re really expensive to produce and the audience is abandoning them, as are the advertisers, so it doesn’t help us much to go on talking about newspapers.
2. Journalism costs a lot of money to do (and especially if it’s done well), because it requires dedicated people. So we can’t pretend that the work will get done for free. It will not.
3. Citizens and amateurs and well-meaning whistle-blowers, etc., etc., will sometimes commit wonderful acts of journalism. But they will NOT do so reliably, day in and day out, and there aren’t enough of them with the interest, free time, and goodwill to do everything journalists have been doing for about 400 years.
4. Newspapers were a nice business. Publishers could make the product insanely cheap (remember the penny press), and the advertising would cover the expenses, plus generate fantastic profits. However, this is clearly over. It’s done. It worked for a long time, but now, like trans-Atlantic leisure travel in big passenger ships, it will never work again.
5. No one today goes to one spot online as the trusted information source. People don’t even go to five or six. Everyone goes to dozens, hundreds — more. A subscription scheme is therefore not workable.

And some from Ryan Sholin:

1. It’s not Google’s fault. Get over it, professor. Blaming search engines is like blaming the library. “Oh no, please don’t let readers actually find stories from my newspaper and then click through to my site to read them, anything but that!” Forget it.
2. It’s not Craig’s fault. Newspaper classifieds suck and they have for years. Either develop simple database applications with photos and maps to let your users actually find what they’re looking for, or partner with a good third-party vertical who can. Anything less is a waste of your time.
3. It’s time to stop handwringing and start training. If your editors are still writing navelgazers about the cataclysmic changes in the business instead of starting training programs to teach some new tricks to you and that guy in the cubicle next door, that’s a problem. Stop whining and move on.
4. You don’t get to charge people for archives and you certainly don’t want to charge people for daily news content. Pulling your copy behind walls where it can’t be seen by readers on the wider Web. Search rules. Don’t hide from it.
5. Reporters need to do more than write. The new world calls for a new skillset, and you and Mr. Notebook need to make some new friends, like Mr. Microphone and Mr. Point & Shoot.
6. Bloggers aren’t an uneducated lynch mob unconcerned by facts. They’re your readers and your neighbors and if you play your cards right, your sources and your community moderators. If you really play it right, bloggers are the leaders of your networked reporting projects. Get over the whole bloggers vs. journalists thing, which has been pretty much settled since long before you stopped calling it a “Web blog” in your stories.
7. You ignore new delivery systems at your own peril. RSS, SMS, iPhone, e-paper, Blackberry, widgets, podcasts, vlogs, Facebook, Twitter — these aren’t the competition, these are your new carriers. Learn how to deliver your content across every new technology that comes into view on the horizon, and be there when new devices go into mass production.
8. J-schools can either play a critical role in training the next generation of journalists, or they can fade into irrelevancy. Teach multimedia, interactivity and data, or watch your students become frustrated and puzzled as they try to get jobs with five clips and a smile.
9. Okay, here comes the big one: THE GLASS IS HALF FULL. There is excellent work being done in the new world of online journalism and it’s being done at newspapers like the Washington Post and the Lawrence Journal-World and the San Jose Mercury News and the St. Petersburg Times and the Bakersfield Californian and all sorts of papers of all sizes. You don’t need millions of dollars or HD cameras or years of training to make it happen; all you need is the right frame of mind. So let’s stop writing and groaning about how things used to be different, and let’s start building our own piece of the new world of newspapers brick by brick, story by story.

Yes! Thank you!

I know, I really hate that newspapers are going under. Scrolling through a laptop just isn't the same as holding a newspaper in your hand. I will miss having something concrete. But holding onto the quaintness of newspapers is not worth losing profits, or missing out on the opportunities online. Things may be a bit rough right now, but holding onto the past won't help. Moving ahead with technology will. News will go on. So stop freaking out.

Boys Basketball Region Finals

Hey, go check out my photo blog for some shots of my high school's region finals game. It was intense.

Warning: Creepy Bunny Alert

Despite the Frank the Bunny type weirdness this dance left me with, Wade Robson's piece for Criss Angel's show Believe is creepily awesome. It was performed during the season 4 finale of So You Think You Can Dance.

Tea Party Protest Slogan Ideas

Since I'm going to be a journalist that day, I won't be carrying around any protest signs at the Nashville Tax Day Tea Party. However, I do support speaking out against against the government's economic policy. So for fun I'm creating a list of possible slogans for signs, some that I have found and a few made up. Feel free to borrow them or post comments with your own ideas.


"Free thinkers for a free market"

"I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. "
- John Galt's Oath

"Spare us Your 'Change'"

"Bailouts, Stimulus, and Pork. Oh My!"

"Ayn Rand was Right"

"Party Like it's 1773"

"The Answer to 1984 is 1776"

"Don't Stimulate: Liberate"

"Paying My Mortgage, and Yours Too"

"Don't Tread on Me"

“Keep Your Bailout; I’ll Keep My Freedom”
- Tampa, FL Protest Sign

"Obamanomics: Chains You Can Believe In"
- Harrisburg, PA protest sign

"Born Free, Taxed to Death"
- Fullerton, CA protest sign

"Give me Liberty, not Debt"

"Robbing Hood: Stealing from the Prosperous to Give to the Incompetent"

“Pillage and Plunder: At Least the Vikings did it Openly”
- Atlanta, GA protest sign

"Don't be a DouChe"
- Shirt referring to Che Guevara

"Stop Subsidizing Stupidity"

"Comander and Thief"
- NYC protest sign

"Free Markets, Not Free Loaders"

"Read Atlas Shrugged"

"If You Think Health Care is Expensive Now, Wait Until it's Free"

“It’s not a stimulus bill, it’s a strangulation bill.”
- Michelle Malkin

"Your Mortgage is Not My Problem"
- DC protest sign

"Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth."
- Margaret Thatcher

"Repeal the Bailout"

Here are some more graphic designs (for the ambitious), that play with the Obama symbol:

-via incredipete.com

- via Michelle Malkin








-via Michelle Malkin



Thanks to Rational Jenn, Stephen Bourque, and Darren Cauthon for ideas.

Depression in College: Getting Out of my Own Way

I had always expected college to be awesome. High school felt more like a daycare than a place to learn (albeit a few classes). So senior year, I was so excited to finally get out, to move onto bigger and better things at college, to study what I wanted and leave all the immaturity behind. Coming to college, I expected stimulating conversations with interesting people. I expected people who really loved what they were doing, who were passionate and intellectual. I expected... more.

Unfortunately that's not what I found here at Western, not completely. What I found were people who spent most of their time partying an sleeping around. I found people who couldn't care less about their classes, who had no idea what they were doing at college. I found that many of my classes in senior year were harder than the general education requirements I'm taking now. I hardly ever found thoughtful discussion, just gossip. I didn't find those deep, interesting people I had imagined. I was so disappointed. And what's worse is that when I voiced my frustrations with college, people said something along the lines of "Oh yeah, college sucks." That's not what you told me in high school! Everyone had told me that I would LOVE college. That I would fit right in. That it would be the best time of my life. And now they were telling me that it's not all it's cracked up to be?

Disappointment plus not having many close friends at college led to loneliness and some depression. I spent a lot of time alone in my dorm room. I spent hours on the phone and computer talking to my best friend 500+ miles away, often complaining about how much it all sucked. I latched onto him so much that he was my single social contact. Coming home for a month and half of winter break, I decided to spend time with old friends, work on a photo story to keep me occupied, and try to get a job. The job was a bust. Nobody was hiring, especially not for one month. I hung out with friends, which was fun, but being apart had removed a lot of common ground. And as for the photo story, I was only able to work on it towards the end of break, and laziness kept me in bed when I should have been shooting. I wasn't much happier, and it was ruining my self esteem, my relationships, and my life.

Talking to a few people helped me realize that I needed to change. My dad told me not to be a victim in my own life. My friend told me to try to find some college friends to keep me sane. But some of the best advice I got was from Diana Hsieh at NoodleFood. I emailed her asking how she got to be so happy and if she had any advice for improving my life in college. She sent this in return:

Miranda --

I wasn't particularly happy in college. I was actually pretty depressed at
times.

I was definitely lonely; I found few interesting people in my classes. My
two best friends were from outside school.

Also, I felt too much at the beck and call of the people and events around
me, such that I couldn't create my own life. I felt caught between still
being my parents' kid (like still going home for summers, finishing college
on my father's schedule, etc) and creating my own life. I disliked the
grind of coursework -- something I still hated as a graduate student. I
never felt like I had enough time to seriously think about what I was
learning.

I think two decisions kept me relatively sane in college:

(1) I got a apartment off-campus in my sophomore year. (I had two
roommates.) I could live my own life to a great extent, rather than living
the standard college dorm life. I could cook my own food, keep my own
schedule, pay my own bills, spend time alone, etc. Those little things
mattered a great deal to me.

(2) I worked a regular job outside of school -- as a waitress in a
restaurant in a nearby business district. I liked the people I worked with
better than I liked the people I was in class with. I had more interesting
-- and more real -- conversations with them. I was proud of the money that
I made.

Still, I wasn't terribly happy -- and sometimes I was pretty miserable.

After college, life got much better very quickly, I felt like my life was
finally my own: I came into my own as a person. I moved to a new city --
not back to my home town. I felt no obligation to heed my parents' advice,
as they weren't supporting me. (My parents aren't overbearing, although I
did have a big fight with my mother the first time I didn't come home for
Christmas.) I began developing my own interests apart from anything I'd
ever learned in school (e.g. programming, gardening). Still, I wasn't
dating the right person for me, and that created problems and conflicts.

Ultimately, my life has become mostly fabulous since my marriage to Paul.
(The worst time -- by far -- was when I was finishing up my coursework in
graduate school. UGH.) I won't bore you with the details of that, but the
critical fact is that life is so very easy with him. I never feel hampered
or restricted by him, as I did with prior boyfriends. Also, since we've
been married, I've been able to cultivate my own personal interests even
more -- like gardening, cooking, fitness, etc. (Note that those are largely
physical pursuits. I figure that I do enough hard thinking in my regular
work.)

All of that is probably more than you needed to know. For concrete
recommendations, I'd recommend that you think about living and working
off-campus, if you're not doing that already. Find some way of interacting
with real people (i.e. not college students or professors) in pursuit of
some common values, e.g. take a cooking class or start crossfit training.
You might also consider starting some kind of project that matters to you
personally -- like pursuing some fitness goal or learning to cook or
learning to shoot pistols or something. Or find better people on the
internet. Or start some internet-based project in pursuit of something that
matters to you.

I hope you find that helpful. College life does suck in many ways -- so you
just have to work around it if you choose to stay.

--DMH

Wow, did that help. I'm not the only one who was disappointed by college! Someone else had gone through the same thing and come out the other side loving life.

Something else that helped was Craig Biddle's lecture "God Said". Part of the lecture focuses on how to apply Objectivism to you life. One of the lessons that stuck out in my mind is that in order to achieve happiness, one has to pursue values. To seek out productive work, fulfilling hobbies, good relationships, and work towards maintaining one's freedom.

I hadn't done any of that. I realized that the reason my life sucked so much was that I wasn't being selfish. I wasn't making myself and my happiness my central purpose. Instead I was focusing too much on other people and how they were ruining my college experience. I wasn't pursuing values, I was sitting in my dorm room waiting for life to change. I was playing the victim. I had thought that by simply supporting Objectivism, by believing in man as an end himself, believing in selfishness and rationality, that I had already succeeded in being a true Objectivist. But I wasn't living by the principles I believed in, which is the whole point.

So after that mini-epiphany I made a list of things to do to make sure life was better this semester. I call it "College Take Two."

1. Get a job. (This has proven to be tough in a college town in a bad economy. Nobody seems to be hiring. Nonetheless I've put out applications to many places and continually check the classifieds. Also applied for some internship, including the ARI Summer Internship!)
2. Go to more PJ events. (I'm finding photojournalism kids are the passionate interesting people I was looking for. Socializing with them is always fun, and being around them makes me more involved with my work.)
3. Start working out. (Eh, I've been slacking on this one. I don't particularly like exercising in front of people at the gym, and it's too cold to be outside much. But I do plan on starting dance classes next semester and I'm looking out for local adult classes now.)
4. Talk to more people. (I can't meet those fabulous people if I don't reach out, right? This includes just talking more to strangers, people at parties, classmates, etc.)
5. Go to more events on and off campus. (Another way to meet people, to probe for photo story ideas, and check out some cool stuff. So far I've gone to more of PJ lectures, parties, deaf community events, and some poetry readings.)
6. Pick a minor. (I've tested out of some classes, so I'm a few classes ahead. I need a minor soonish. Right now I'm considering minoring in dance, philosophy, or film studies, though I really wish I could minor in ASL. I'm meeting with department heads and trying to sit in on a few classes to make the decision.)
7. Apply like hell for scholarships. (I barely got any for this year. I'd rather not dig the hole deeper with student loans next year.)
8. Get a library card. (I like to read.)
9. Get a 4.0. (Being super white and my parents "making too much money", I need kick ass grades to get the academic scholarships. I got a 3.8 last semester.)
10. Develop my interests. (Listen to more performance poetry. Get more involved in colorguard. Read. Start a blog.)

So far I've been doing better, a lot better than last semester. It's still a struggle at times since I'm not the best at handling my emotions. I have to constantly remind myself of this list and to keep things in perspective. But I'm happier. I feel more in control of my life. I don't have many close friends at college, but being alone doesn't suck anymore. I only expect things to get better.