“Challenges in Journalism in 2014”

2014 Biannual Conference for the Society for Collegiate Journalists

Critical questions in this e-book for SCJ Conference

What are the top three challenges for journalism?

What can we do about these challenges?

Bethany CollegeBethany, West Virginia

Proud to host the 2014 Biannual SCJ Conference on our beautiful campus

Founded 1840—oldest degree-granting institution in West VirginiaResidential; liberal arts and pre-professional

1000 headcount, 805 full-time students 

Graduates—and Diplomas—of Distinction

Gregory JordanGeneral Counsel & Head of Regulatory and Government AffairsPNC Financial Services

Frances McDarmentActress

Dr. Arthur B. Keys, Jr.President & CEO International Relief and Development

Faith DanielsTV Anchor

Dr. John NiederhuberCEOInova Translational Medicine Institute

Marie DeParisVice President, Marketing and Business DevelopmentSportsNet NY

Robert J. McCannChief Executive Officer of the AmericasUBS

Kaye G. HearnJustice

South Carolina Supreme Court

Thomas BuergenthalRetired International Court of JusticeHague

Scarlett FosterRetired Vice President of Investor RelationsMonsanto

Jhamal RobinsonVP of Production ManagementTLC

Dave SimsBroadcasterSeattle Mariners

Bob OrrCorrespondentCBS News

Ken BadoCEOGMB Consulting LLC

Andrea RockAuthor

Richard ClancySenior Director of Public RelationsCovario, Inc.

2014 SCJ Conference Panelists

Communications and Media Arts

Specialized Classroom to Career Opportunities

The SCJ Panelists• Sandra Block, ’81, Senior Associate Editor,

Kiplinger.• Kurt Franck, ’78, Executive Editor, Toledo Blade• Peter Jensen, ’81, editorial writer, Baltimore Sun• Jim Rice, ’81, Content Coach/Sports, Greenville

News, Gannett “Butterfly” Project• Jeffrey Seglin, ’78, Former Editor of INC magazine,

Director, Communications Program, Harvard Kennedy School

• George Manahan, ’83, Owner and CEO, The Manahan Group, Charleston, West Virginia, Moderator

Thank you to our sponsors

Sandra Block

Sandra Block, senior associate editor for Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, has covered personal finance for more than 20 years. Before joining Kiplinger's, she was a personal finance reporter and columnist for USA TODAY. Her areas of expertise include taxes, saving for retirement, student loans, consumer banking and money management. She is co-author of the "Busy Family's Guide to Money" and "Easy Ways to Lower Your Taxes: Simple Strategies Every Taxpayer Should Know." Block has also worked for the Akron Beacon-Journal, Dow Jones News Services, McGraw-Hill and the Wheeling News-Register. She was a 1993-94 fellow in the Knight Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. She graduated from Bethany College with a bachelor of arts degree in communications in 1981.

Print, paywall, decline of ethics. 

The top problem facing journalism is that a large part of our audience expects to get news for free! This problem is compounded by the disappointing revenue from online advertising; with an unlimited number of places to advertise, we're seeing a race to the bottom for rates. 

The pressure for immediacy is another problem, which often results in the dissemination of errors that are potentially dangerous, such as reports naming the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing that turned out to be wrong.. 

The third problem is the increasingly fuzzy line between content and advertising; the rise of "native" ads and other ads that resemble the news. This threatens the credibility of our reporting. 

 

 Solutions (or options toward solving) those three top problems

I think paywalls have great promise. What the New York Times is doing is very exciting. Unlike most of its competitors, it's expanding its product in the hope that readers will be willing to pay for quality. I hope that it works.

As for the immediacy problem, news organizations simply have to resist the temptation to publish information they can't independently verify, even if means being late to the story. And they must maintain a strong wall between content and ads.

 

 Three “top future problems” in the industry

Convincing the best and the brightest to pursue a career in journalism.

Coming up with a way to provide good, local news when local newspapers are no longer profitable.

Teaching future journalists the skills that will make them marketable. It's not enough to be good at Twitter and Facebook. The journalist of the future should have at least basic computer programming skills.

 

 Three most important things you’ve learned and use daily

I have found that Twitter is a great way to get a quick read on the news in the morning and follow breaking news throughout the day (I use Hootsuite).

Social media is useful, but still no substitute for face to face reporting. 

Fact checking takes time, but correcting errors is even more time consuming.

 

 What would you do if you were a student today in journalism/digital media storytelling (academically, internship, jobs)

 

I would take a lot of non journalism courses, such as economics, history, statistics (especially statistics since journalists so often get them wrong!). I would take courses in photography, video, and as I mentioned, basic programming. I was fortunate to have a part-time job at the Wheeling News Register when I was at Bethany and found that experience to be invaluable. l would take advantage of new, free blogging tools to publish my work, but resist the temptation to work for anyone for free. Too many journalists are giving their best work away.

Kurt Franck

Kurt Franck is executive editor/vice president of he Blade of Toledo. As executive editor, Franck is the newsroom’s top manager, overseeing The Blade’s news operations. He also is responsible for long-range planning, staff development and administrative functions. Before being promoted to executive editor in January 2010, Franck was the newspaper’s managing editor since September 2000. During his time at The Blade, he helped direct the 2004 Pulitzer Prize winning series on atrocities by Tiger Force, an elite U.S. Army platoon, during the Vietnam War. He also was a key editor on the newspaper’s coverage of “Coingate”, a year-long investigation of the state's investment in a rare-coin fund that exposed illegal actions by the governor and other state officials, spurring successful criminal prosecution and other corrective action. Before joining The Blade in September 2000, Franck worked for 16 years at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. Prior to joining the Sun-Sentinel, Franck spent six years in a variety of assignments with United Press International, including bureaus in Columbus, Atlanta, Birmingham, Orlando and Miami.Franck served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 and 2008, judging the investigative reporting category and the local news category in respective years. He is a 1978 graduate of Bethany College with a degree in mass communication.

Newsroom size, Investigative journalist, revenue.

* Some corporate papers are abandoning their news efforts and axing newsroom staffs. I will be the first to say that during the "glory years of newspapers", staff were bloated, but of late newsroom staffs have been cut considerably and readers/users suffer.

 

* Not enough investigative journalism. Part of the problem is the result of newsroom staffs being trimmed. Investigative projects are time consuming and can cost money.

 

* Figuring out ways to pay for news coverage with the decline of the printed paper.

 

Suggestions to fix these problems:

* There is no easy solution to problem No. 1 because news organizations need to be profitable. However, I would make every effort to hire journalists who are strong reporters, solid/colorful writers who can investigate and produce journalism on all platforms. Also, the newsroom must sell this idea to the business side so it don't hacked newsroom personnel, especially reporters.

 

* Invest at least one reporter who can constantly produce investigative projects. These should be projects that can be turned over in a timely fashion. Not longer than a few weeks to a month. This reporter can help other reporters produce enterprise journalism, too.

 

* I am a proponent of paywalls or all-access membership. I say this because I don't think news organizations should give their news for free. The newspaper industry erred in the mid 1990s, in my opinion, when they opened their websites up for nothing. People now expect free news on websites.

 

I also think advertising reps need to clearly explain to potential advertisers the reach and results newspapers can provide, with the printed edition, the e-edition, the website and mobile edition. Newspapers are seeing a decline in their print editions, but more people are reading newspaper stories because of the many platforms used to present the news. 

 

Peter Jensen

Peter Jensen, a 1981 graduate of Bethany College, is employed as an editorial writer for The Baltimore Sun where he has worked since 1986 holding a variety of positions from commuter columnist to county correspondent and those are just the titles that begin with the letter “C” which was by sheer coincidence his customary grade in college.  He has written extensively on the Chesapeake Bay, transportation, state government and Maryland politics. He has won various awards for his work including the Scripps-Howard Foundation’s Meeman Award for environmental reporting and the Maryland-Delaware DC Press Association’s Best in Show for editorial writing (Take that, Washington Post). Prior to joining The Sun, he was employed as a reporter by The Cincinnati Post and the Easton (Md.) Star-Democrat.

Decline of economic model.

I think this is a trick question because there’s only one – the decline of the economic model that has supported journalism in this country. Today, my newspaper is read by more people than it ever has in its history yet revenue has declined markedly. A good quarter is when income matches the previous year, hardly the sign of a robust industry. Needless to say, wages are stagnant.

 I think we all know what happened. Newspapers are a for-profit enterprise historically supported mostly by advertising and to a lesser extent by paid circulation. Over the long term, the rise of alternative media including broadcast cut into that pie and caused a slow attrition in that business model. But it scarcely prepared the industry for what has happened over the last decade or so as the Internet has fundamentally changed the media landscape. Advertising dollars have left newspapers in a veritable flood.  To mix metaphors, we are lying on the hospital bed and bleeding out.

 Here’s an example. When I graduated from Bethany and started in the business, my employers could count on advertising to supply about three-quarters of their revenue. Classified ads provided a big chunk of that, those little $20 advertisements with about three lines of copy that allowed average folks to sell a used car or exercise equipment or find a job (including my first). Imagine being dependent on millions of dollars in classified ad revenue and then watching Craigslist and the like take all that away practically overnight. Today, only an idiot would buy a classified ad when you can get a free listing online and reach a broader audience. 

Newspapers have had to raise prices and cut costs dramatically. Small wonder our readers are perplexed when they see a much-thinner newspaper on their driveways at a far greater cost. We’ve expanded our online presence hugely. But as you are doubtless aware, such ads don’t generate nearly the revenue that traditional display ads published ROP provide. The result is that online journalism is mostly a pretty weak brew of tea, dominated by cheap efforts to either compile news from other sources or create eye-grabbing but vacuous features like top-10 lists, photo galleries or quizzes. Page views become all-important and quality journalism may attract millions of clicks but so will 10 lists of “Worst Reality TV Stars” or “Favorite Kardashian Sister Poll.” Most advertisers don’t care what attracted people to their product, good journalism or bad. 

Decline, cont.• The various fixes have brought their own problems. Create a paywall and people will simply go elsewhere for content — unless maybe you are the Wall Street Journal and have a captive and

affluent audience. So most newspapers these days try to play both sides of the street, offering a certain number of free page views before imposing a paywall (that can usually be bypassed by simply reconfiguring your browser, wink wink). We’ve also tried to sprinkle in our share of photo galleries and the like while also concentrating on the more valuable fare, enterprise and investigative journalism. Indeed, there’s a certain irony that reporters today have better tools to do investigative work than ever before in the history of the human race yet they find themselves like polar bears standing on shrinking icebergs, journalism’s version of climate change, because of the Internet which provided all those tools.

•  Make no mistake, the industry is not sitting still. Today, a newspaper isn’t really about what you see in print alone. There are people working full time in multimedia, engaging readers on the social networks, blogging and updating online stories throughout the day. We link articles to the world. Offer readers video connections, reports and data analysis. We are the most popular web address in our city. We have purchased newspapers in the surrounding counties and tried to build an interconnected network of local news and information that is second to none. But that’s still not enough because it doesn’t generate the revenue needed to grow the business.

•  This is not unique to print media. Broadcast has felt the pinch as well but their economic model is slightly different. Their challenge is more about competing with cable and other content providers across a 24-hour broadcast day during which news is a small slice. And frankly, the quality of local broadcast news has always been a bit dismal, dependent more on police reports, press conferences and copying the content of local newspapers than on any serious news gathering or reporting. The big bosses at Tribune are far more interests in the overnight ratings for “Manh(A)ttan” than they are about Pulitzer Prizes for the L.A. Times.

•  I can’t tell you for certain how this is going to resolve. As much as the industry has been criticized for the slowness with which it has responded to the challenge, I don’t sense any reluctance to change today. People are feeling desperate and they are willing to try something new, anything new. We will at least find some level of equilibrium and I sense it’s not that far away. Already, revenue declines have stabilized to some degree. Newspapers may not survive in newsprint form beyond the next 10 or 20 years but I suspect they will survive in electronic form for quite some time to come.

•  But here’s the more interesting question: What does all this mean to average folks and, without sounding too self-important, to our democracy? During my lifetime and beyond, the bread and butter of newspaper reporting has been covering government from the local planning and zoning meetings to city council work sessions to Congressional hearings and the Executive Branch. As newspaper resources have declined — or directed toward less substantive matters — how are Americans going to find out what is going on with matters involving local, state and federal government? Oh, there will always been people crowding White House press conferences but what about that P&Z meeting where a developer stands to make millions of dollars if his shopping center or apartment complex is approved?

•  Frankly, this is what keeps me awake at night. I know there are always people who will attend such meetings and some will no doubt try to keep notes to let their neighbors know what’s going on. But I fear this will hardly provide the kind of Fourth Estate scrutiny that Americans take for granted. And here’s the frustration: People won’t know what they’re missing. Like the sound of a lonely tree falling in the woods, a local government scandal is silent if there’s nobody to witness it, recognize what’s going on and report it to the world.

•  As long as I’m ranting, please allow me to share my other frustration — the notion that the media (usually described by critics as the “mainstream” media) has suffered chiefly because it is politically liberal and is unable to report the news fairly or accurately. This is demonstrably false, easily disproved by the fact that conservative-leaning media has suffered the same losses as their liberal counterparts. But it’s a narrative that won’t go away because it serves a political purpose. Trust me on this point, our employers would tell us to quote Rush Limbaugh in a worshipful manner on a daily basis if they thought it would increase revenue.

•  Thus, I think if there is a message to convey to people intent on entering the field of journalism, it would be this: First, sorry that what you will encounter will be far more challenging environment than what I discovered in 1981 when I walked into my first newsroom. In those days, the biggest hardship was the gradual loss of afternoon dailies and the layoff of printers who were no longer needed as we moved to photocomposition. When I joined The Sun’s editorial department 12 years ago, I worked with a staff of 16 people writing opinion, editing commentary and drawing cartoons. Today, we are four. It’s not my fault, it’s not your fault, it’s just the economic model.

•  • But I also think that it’s an exciting time, an opportunity for the entrepreneur journalist armed with cell phone and laptop. One individual can do amazing things today without ever setting foot in a

newsroom. Let others worry about how to monetize those efforts. They will, eventually. What you should focus on is good journalism because I still believe there will always be a market for that.

Jim Rice

Jim Rice, is a 1981 graduate of Bethany College and has been with The Greenville News for 16 years, the past eight as sports news editor of the newspaper and GreenvilleOnline.com. He also has worked as reporter and/or editor in the sports departments of The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, the Orange County Register of Santa Ana, Calif., The State of Columbia, S.C., the Independent-Mail of Anderson, S.C., The Thomaston (Ga.) Times and the Wheeling News-Register. Rice is a magna cum laude graduate of Bethany College, class of 1981, with a degree in communications.

Challenge everything, like a good watchdog.

Top three problems now in journalism.  We must find a way to succeed financially. Advertising is no longer able to sustain print journalism, and print circulation numbers dwindle as more and more consumers turn to the digital platform as their source for news and information. Digital media face a double-edged challenge as well: A significant number of consumers resist going behind a paywall for information and news that for so long was offered without cost, and because of the explosion of digital media outlets, advertising revenue is splintered as well.We can’t lose sight that what we do is journalism. Digital media offer opportunities for real time – or near real time – journalism. But speed is no substitute for accuracy; too often, we’re getting sloppy in our desire to be first. Fast but shallow “information” will never replace deep, insightful, accurate journalism. This ties closely to No. 2 on my list but … what’s happening to the Fourth Estate. In chasing social engagement with our communities and the often insipid stories that go viral in order to boost the number and frequency of visits to our digital sites, we’re too often taking resources away from our fundamental role as a watchdog for society.  Top three solutions to the largest problems in journalism (options, at least) The companies that own media outlets must take a longer-term look at the industry and their investment in it. While we can’t ignore our investors, we also can’t ignore our readers.Our priority must remain in teaching the tools of journalism and not in the tools of social media.Media outlets must support that quality journalism and reporting that can’t always be completed in an hour. Or a day. Or a week. Top three future problems in the industry.  Finding the successful combinations of audience and platform. We must find bright, talented newcomers and attract them to the industry. 

Challenge everything, cont.Three most important things I’ve learned and use daily.

Challenge everything. Trust but verify. That means everything from the person you’re interviewing, the document you’re reading and your own copy.

Read. Read. Read. Not just your own stuff, but everybody’s. I go to Google, Twitter, etc., throughout my work day and at home. I keep the AP Stylebook at my side, too.

Who, what, when and where, and most importantly, why and how.

 

What would I do if I were a student today in journalism/ digital media storytelling.

 

Practice, practice, practice. Write every chance you get – student media outlets, internships, part-time/free-lance opportunities. Turn down no opportunities to improve, but be careful about giving away your work for free. And read every chance you get. Find journalists whose work you admire and follow them – and not just on Twitter.

Diversify your academics. Nothing replaces journalism classes, but take a liberal arts approach to your studies. English / literature classes can teach you to read, write and to research. And critical thinking. History classes hone your research skills but also teach you context, also vitally important to your reporting. Business/economics classes give you the foundation to understand the financial side of almost any beat you cover. Mathematics and statistics classes give you valuable tools in so many areas that will tie in to your reporting. Throw in a philosophy class to learn about a deeper approach to the seemingly simple art of thinking. Sciences? Not my strong point, but if you can combine a strong academic background in say, ecology, with that foundation in journalism, you’ll find work.

You get into college in large part because you know the right answers. By the time you leave, you need to know how to ask the right questions.

Jeffrey Seglin

Jeffrey L. Seglin is a syndicated weekly column on general ethics that currently runs in newspapers in the United States and Canada. The column was syndicated by the New York Times Syndicate from February 2004 through August 2010. In September 2010, Tribune Media Services began distributing "The Right Thing" column.Seglin is the author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today’s Business. It was named as one of the "Best Business Books of 2003" by the Library Journal. It is a collection of the first four years of “The Right Thing,” which until January 2004 had been a monthly business ethics column he wrote for The Sunday New York Times Money and Business pages since 1998. He is also the author of The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart (Wiley, 2000).In 2011, Seglin joined the full-time faculty and became director of the communications program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The communications program resides in the Shorenstein Center on the Media, Politics and Public Policy. In May 2014, the student body awarded him the Carballo Award that recognizes a faculty member’s dedication to students, excellence in the professional field, and commitment to public service.

Jeffrey Seglin

Cont.

Seglin worked at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts from 1999 until 2011, where he was an associate professor and also director of the graduate program in publishing and writing. He has been an ethics fellow at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies since 2001 and was a resident fellow at the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard in 1998-1999.He lectures widely on ethics, business ethics and writing, including  sessions at the Executive MBA Program at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Duke Corporate Education, Harvard Business School Publishing Virtual Seminars, Virginia Commonwealth University and other organizations. He was the host of Doing Well by Doing Good, an hour-long live television program airing out of WCVE-TV, PBS's Richmond, Virginia,  affiliate. He also served as a consultant on the business ethics module of Harvard Manage Mentor. He has been named as one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.He is the author or co-author on more than a dozen books on business and writing. He has written for publications including The New York Times, Real Simple, Fortune, FSB, Salon.com, Time.com, Sojourners, MIT's Sloan Management Review, Harvard Management Update, Business 2.0, ForbesASAP, CIO, CFO, MBA Jungle, among others. He has contributed commentaries to Public Radio's Marketplace.

Financial model, strong candidates. 1.     Finding a financial model that works for journalism to be sustainable.2.     Attracting and training strong candidates who are open to being trained to learn the basics of journalism and to be patient enough to learn how to create well-reported, well-written responsible stories.3.     Embracing the fact that while delivery mechanisms for good journalism are evolving, the importance of reporting well, writing well, and doing good work remain the primary objective for journalists. Solutions (or options toward solving) those three top problems 1.     Tough to have one answer for this one. But one broad response is that owners (whether individuals or public markets) would do well to make long-term investments recognizing that profitability may be a long-term prospect rather than something that is seen in the first quarter or ownership. Bezos seemed to recognize this when he started Amazon.com (http://www.inc.com/magazine/19970901/1314.html). It remains to be seen whether he or other recent purchasers of major media properties (John Henry, etc.) have the same patience for long-term profitability with their media properties as Bezos did with Amazon.com.2.     Again, no clear answer. One would be to make sure to keep clear in academia that journalism is not public relations or advertising. The proximity of these areas within the same department at many institutions has long struck me as problematic. Journalism programs should encourage rigorous reporting on campus and not view campus media as mouthpieces for the institution. 3.     Training students or journalists how to use FlipPhones a few years ago symbolized part of the problem. Delivery mechanisms and recognizing that print is not the only way that news will be disseminated clearly needs to be recognized. But to do good journalism relies far more on rigorous reporting and writing than it does on learning how to use a cell phone camera or to code. Coding is great. Everyone might benefit from learning how to code in the same way that everyone might benefit by understanding how their car works or how to change a faucet in their house. These latter things don’t make you a mechanic or a plumber. Coding doesn’t make you a journalist. Staying focused on strong reporting and writing and not getting lost in insisting journalists learn the latest tech is important. Any reasonably intelligent person can learn to post and format a story online. Being a good journalism requires staying focused on the craft.

Future problems in the industry?

 Three “top future problems” in the industry

 Anyone who tells you they know the answer to this definitively should be suspect – although there are plenty of people who insist they know. But here are a few concerns:

1.     The consolidation of the media industry. With less choice comes less independence and a growing need to be driven by short-term profits.

2.     Attracting, training, and retaining talented individuals who know they could easily make more money in advertising, PR, or as a hedge fund manager.

3.     Determining who the audience is in an evolving media landscape.

 

Three most important things you’ve learned and use daily

 1.     How to write.

2.     How to think.

3.     How to be relentlessly curious.

 

What would you do if you were a student today in journalism/digital media storytelling (academically, internship, jobs)

 I was not a journalism student when I was in college. If I knew I wanted to get into journalism today, I would not major solely in journalism. I would double major or have at least a minor in another subject area or two, whether that is economics, religion, foreign languages, or anything. I would try to press myself on not only learning the craft of journalism while in school, but also trying to focus on learning how to report on more complex issues in other areas. Focusing on another area while in college and then trying to apply what’s learned in journalism to that area might help with critical thinking and expanding a world view.

 

George Manahan

George Manahan, built The Manahan Group on experience, creativity and twenty years of work in advertising and public relations. He created an original process for brand development, and spearheaded the creation of a crisis communications application.        His nationally-award winning work has generated success for a variety of clients in the health care, tourism, financial and legal professions, among others. George’s work in advertising agency management combined with former jobs in journalism and as press secretary to Governor Gaston Caperton led him to establish The Manahan Group.

For additional information

M. E. Yancosek Gamble

Chair, Department of Business, Communications and Media Arts

Bethany College

31 E. Campus Drive #2

Bethany, WV 26032-3002

 

Phone:  304.829.7710

Mobile Phone:  301.788.8498

Email:  meyancosekgamble@bethanywv.edu