This is my first slideshow creation - created with photos from Gisel's birthday party under the direction of Wendy Chapman and Marc Cooper at Annenberg.
"It's a whole different world over here, isn't it?"
ID: 44630, Published in The New Yorker November 13, 2000
Have journalists lost touch with the majority of the population? When Rosenstiel's book and Michael Parks describe journalists as well-educated and well-off I almost laughed out loud. It was a purely cynical response for sure.
I would add that many are suburban, only associate with others just like themselves and therefore only care about middle to upper-class issues. One editor I worked for wanted to flood the paper with 401k stories and seemed shocked when we tried to explain many people do not have 401ks or retirement accounts at all. When I worked in Orange County several of us coordinated a bus tour for editors and others to certain parts of the county not unlike the recent tours grad students took of areas around USC. The difference: students versus editors and others who claim to know an area and cover it.
Editors hobnob with politicians, focus on business coverage centered on homeowners, retirement account holders and those with medical insurance. All worthy stories but there is more going on beyond our own comfort zone. There are poor people who will never own a home, families dependent on food stamps, young couples wondering if they can afford to have a family and people giving up their pets because they cannot feed them. The homeowner stories are focused on bankers instead of the people who pay the loans. The experiences of business owners who are one more government tax or increase in minimum wage from going out of business are rarely covered.
This gap has become the space where blogs, websites and other new media now live. The disconnect between those who think they know what is going on and those who live it everyday has fostered a lot of those new media outlets or citizen journalism.
Traditional media can get back in the gap through education, open-mindedness and effort to get out of the comfort zone. It's easy to cover what we know. It could mean more bus tours or more explanations or it could come from this new generation of Specialized Journalists who are going to go out and re-create journalism.
Covering a beat without a building is tricky but fulfilling and, contrary to those who support building-centric beats, it is doable and it is necessary. There are new beats on the street corners and in the neighborhoods that could be created or done in whole new ways, especially when the folks who live there and who are now interacting with online technology in whole new ways are doing it themselves.
Immigration. Poverty. Globalized entertainment. technology.
Former LA Times Editor and USC Professor of Journalism Michael Parks' lecture on doing things differently resonated and confirmed what I have been feeling and thinking. These beats are the new journalism and the new tomorrow. These are ideas of change.
I have to admit I particularly like this idea because I once covered a beat that had no building and I really enjoyed it. I described Urban Affairs as neighborhoods and poor people. It's a pretty wide ranging area but one that literally provides stories on every corner and behind every fence.
Building this kind of beat is different than covering a city hall beat or a local school board where there are official players, scheduled meetings and prescribed issues. I attacked the beat by identifying neighborhood leaders, connecting with actively involved business owners and became familiar with the profile of the neighborhood. I knew who lived where, why they lived there, what they wanted from the neighborhood and how much money they earned. Knowing those factors helped me report about a neighborhood's people and issues. In some ways doing this type of beat allows the reporter to create a mini-brand within the larger corporation. I worked in coffeeshops, showed up at neighborhood events and was accessible to anyone (regular Joes) who wanted to chat. People were comfortable calling me. Too bad blogs were not popular back then.
Amazingly that foundation of building a beat based on regular folks served me well in the newsroom as well where colleagues with rolodexes (yes the old round paper wheels) full of notables would email me to ask if I knew some "regular' people they could check in with on stories. I nearly always did.
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The problem in newsrooms of being insulated from "regular folks" is not new. It is just now being challenged by those who have historically written in or emailed or tried to storm the front door of media entities unsuccessfully. It is not surprising the "regular" folks - or the "People Formerly Known as the Audience" as written about by one of Jay Rosen's followers - are the same people who are now bypassing traditional media and creating their own channels of news built around their neighborhoods, schools or areas of interest. When I would meet with neighborhood folks it was often the first time they had been in touch with anyone from the local media. It was almost always the first time anyone was interested in just meeting them and starting a relationship whether there was a story at the time or not. This revolution online was born from that disconnect. |
It's still unclear how to solve the monetary issues of traditional media or how to monetize a blog but the direction is clearly hyper-local in an era when global is local and if news organizations do not cover the street the residents will. As long as we, the news media in whatever form it takes, can bring it home to consumers they will both interact with news media and contribute their own views via blogs and other online media.
"Have you considered the possibility that I don't want the paper?" (Man talking to his dog, who's holding a newspaper for him.) ID: 46458, Published in The New Yorker October 15, 2001
Learning the BBC five shots took the guesswork out of shooting some of my first video. It also made a definite difference in editing the material. I shot several different subjects including the piano girl and video boy professor Andrew Andrew used to illustrate some points on what to look out for in class Friday.
With the television and rotating fan on in the background and the hands and face shots from different angles in the piano girl video and some added shots needed of the video boy (though I did like the video game glare on the boy's glasses) I had hoped to visit them again. Unfortunately, and as if to illustrate Lih's points about making sure you get all the shots you need, the kids were not at home practicing piano or playing video games over the weekend. Plus, their mom was not excited about the kids making YouTube anyway.
Which led me to a new subject, a girl making a salad. Not quite the sounds of a playing piano but I am looking forward to eating some of the salad for dinner. It looks refreshing.
My second video is the 30-second interview with Andre Quintero, candidate for mayor in the city of El Monte. Quintero is a well-spoken politician who was working with a novice videographer (me). Using the screen in the background dimmed the bright backlight from outside while providing great images of palm trees in the background. However, the screen created a weird effect in the video which you will notice in the upper left corner when you watch. Next time: a straight wall background.
This has been a very interesting experiment with video. I never thought I would like it and have seen the emergence of video in newspaper newsrooms as mostly an intrusive hinderance. However, with the right tools, like these tiny flip cams, it could add a new dimension to an in-depth written story though I will be uncomfortable asking sources to cooperate with video at first or in really sensitive situations.
"Radio is possibly still the most important form of media."
Associate Professor Andrew Lih said this during his overview of the media from oral tradition and the development of paper to the internet we know today. His statement struck me because since I've been in Los Angeles the last three weeks I have spent more time listening to the radio then I ever did during my years in Denver. It could be because I had virtually no commute in the mile-high city. I barely had time to apply lipstick on my 1.5 mile drive to work. When I first left Southern California for Denver I missed the radio as my driving companion and began tuning in at home before work and, when time permitted, at my desk online.
Radio news is easy, informative and can be heard while doing a multitude of other things including driving, writing, walking the dog, cleaning and cooking. It's low-maintenance. Television, which I rarely watch, and the internet, on the other hand, require much more attention.
Radio was the first form of mass live distribution and presented a different storytelling style with tighter, shorter sentences and very descriptive language and sounds, according to Lih. Thinking about how radio entered the media landscape made me think about capturing audio in a way I never thought about before as a print reporter. Armed with a notebook and a pen I always jot down descriptions of sounds, sights and smells. I noticed if the subject has a deep voice or talks in a high-pitch. The sounds of a flag flapping in the wind or an axe cutting into a roof make it into my notebook in a descriptive string of words. I have written hundreds of stories with descriptions of sounds and sights and I would have it no other way until this week.
What I would do for some of those squeaks, cries and voices on an audio file...
For the sounds of Ms. Sophie, a mentally-challenged woman in New Orleans struggling to find her family while pushing a squeaky shopping cart in her torn nightdress after Hurricane Katrina. She had a deep voice that occasionally pitched high when she was making a point. She breathed heavily while pushing her cart but would not give it up to go to a shelter. And when she finally met with her family after days of walking around the flooded city she very simply asked them for a new dress.
For the whirs and roars of chainsaws and wood-chippers in Holly, Colorado after a tornado ripped through the town taking out homes, schools and businesses. Residents cried through prayers and voiced hope even as they searched on their hands and knees through piles of debris that were once their homes looking for photos and rare coins that jangled below the pile of wood and fragmented metal but which they could not see.
For the desperate voice of Tom Frost, an Orange County man who lost his daughter on 9/11, the night of the tragedy. He stood on his front lawn in shorts and a t-shirt, disheveled and exhausted. It was quiet on his street at that hour save for his words about his 22-year-old girl who he spoke with that morning. He recalled his last conversation with her and how she said "I love you and see you soon" before his voice and his mind just trailed off.
For those stories I have boxes and boxes of notes. Having an audio component would be a treasure that would touch the senses in a way written words do not and would acquaint readers or listeners with these characters on a different level. Writing a historical piece in five, ten or twenty years would be buoyed by having such audio. Imagine having new interviews juxtaposed with the old of those moments, hours and days after these life-changing events.
"That was pre-media center," photographer Craig Walker wrote me in an email when I asked about possible Sophie audio. "Wouldn't that be priceless."
It was in 2005.
Audio is certainly not necessary with all stories. Historically I only used a tape recorder when the interview topic could be considered controversial with a business executive, alleged suspect or politician. That was an old strategy more about the reporter and accuracy than about sharing audio with readers/viewers. Today using this technology will add a component newspapers are only now starting to explore. Still, just because we have the technology we have to be the architects of it, as professor Roberto Suro has emphasized.
"Be the person who sees the whole package," he said.
As we've worked with the new technology and talked about how to use it I see around me new journalism leaders who see the benefit of it but who also know when and how to use it. Part of the current crisis, Suro said, is that newspapers and other media have not been good at "bending the tools" to their purpose. As a print reporter who resisted - and who is still a bit skeptical - the technology, there is a good argument for learning it and using it when the story demands it.
The key for media companies, especially newspapers, is to take the time to teach the technology and provide the tools. Managers and executives who tout the tools and say they want everyone to report online or use video is not enough. Showing the commitment by providing training, up-to-date tools and time to become experts is key in transforming any organization.
Radio photo credit:
The newspaper industry is undergoing a change. There is no argument there. It is one of the reasons I decided to come to USC for the Specialized Journalism program and it is the reason the program was created. Still that did not ease months of roller-coaster emotions about leaving my job as a full-time reporter at The Denver Post for a nine-month gig at USC that promised to show me the way to a new and sustainable path as a journalist.
I was tired and frustrated, wanting to do more when we had less. In-depth stories about social issues, minority communities and urban neighborhoods had gone away in favor of quick and quicker. I wanted to get back in the trenches of story-telling in long-form.
Still I questioned the logic of letting go at a time when so many of my colleagues are being pushed out of the business. I also wondered if learning the technology I had been resisting would be worth it. The idea of launching a blog made me extremely uncomfortable. It is not in my DNA as a reporter to blend opinion and personal experience with news or expert views. How am I doing so far? Yet, here I was facing a program that would challenge me to utilize forums I have vehemently rejected such as Twitter, Facebook and online blogs. I quite twitter-ing after three days when the Democratic National Convention was in Denver last summer. The edict was to tweet celebrity and political sightings. My last tweet was about Rev. Al Sharpton arriving at the Convention Center. I was late to the event I was going to cover and annoyed by the twittering process. I just did not care that he had arrived. Did anyone else who wasn't there? Surprise, surprise, I did not win the newsroom contest for most twitters.
I know, before you comment, that these types of comments do not make up the whole of Twitter or Facebook. My friend, and former fellow board member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, ZDNet editor Sam Diaz uses social networking tools to maintain a large network of sources and to promote his work. My former colleague Dow Jones Columnist Al Lewis is an avid user of social networking and he uses the tools to promote his columns and his appearances on television. Both have tried to convince me over the last few years to no avail.
But here I am. Having jumped off the cliff to see what USC and the future holds for me and my battered but much-loved partner journalism. The excitement has come in waves since I decided to attend months ago but it took a turn upward on the dial early on our first day when Roberto Suro proclaimed that we will have a hand in the reinvention of journalism. "Anybody can be right," he said.
"Dabble with drastic change," Suro later encouraged.
It's a refreshing and energizing atmosphere where professors and students alike are bubbling with ideas, thoughtful in their analysis and deeply, but respectfully, question one another's ideas and theories. It has been a very long time since I witnessed smart discourse on the state of journalism and an openness to solutions that includes "thinking outside the lines," which Geneva Overholser, director of the School of Journalism, said during our first lunch together as a class.
Overholser, in an essay, expands on this thread in an essay entitled "Wake up, Newies: Stop Fretting and Start Building." It's a good read.
Clearly this discussion is going on in newsrooms too. I have been a part of those conversations for years but it doesn't take on the same type of overview and creative approach I am already experiencing at Annenberg. In the newsroom there is a sense by many of having gone past the point of no return. In the last few months several of my colleagues said I was lucky to be "getting out" and they would "go down with the ship." Being in the center of the hurricane and trying to figure out on a daily basis how to survive both the overall problems of the industry and the internal economic one that has brought buy-outs and lay-offs multiple times and at a moment's notice in newsrooms is a difficult place from which to create an entirely new model.
While the program is, in part, about learning the new technology it is also about the continued importance of good and responsible journalism which is why I am here. This class of artists, environmentalists, public policy thinkers and concerned journalists is already proving that this change will lead to discovery and innovation in journalism for ourselves as individuals building our own brands and for the entities that will emerge as the latest sources for true and necessary news.
This was my very first blog, done in class on my second day at USC. Wendy Chapman taught the class...
Flurry doesn't care about prom. He wasn't there.
We imagine this is what Flurry was like as a pup...
When I figure out how to create a google map I can show you where Flurry lives in Denver.
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