:: everyday journalism ::

Trying to nail down specific operating costs from one newspaper is next to impossible. That information, naturally, is proprietary and confidential, as I came to find out in my handful of phone calls. But that doesn’t help anyone who is trying to analyze a newsroom’s business plan from afar. I know I will not be hired as an accounting consultant any time soon, but I really want to understand just how tough it is to survive as a newspaper in 2008. Are these massive layoffs necessary? Where else could be cut before personnel have to go?

I shot an email to Paul Kauppila, a reference librarian that works specifically with the school of journalism here at SJSU. The resources he pointed me to were invaluable (a list of which I will post PDQ), and I ended up crawling on my hands and knees bookhunting through the section of the library that dealt with newspaper issues.

I found something.

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My major may be journalism here at SJSU, but my minor is business, because I realize a little too well that if you want to make it in this tough working climate, you can’t rely on your “hirable” skills. News flash: no one is hiring. You have to be innovative and entrepreneurial. I know next to nothing about the business side of the journalism world, which is why I chose my minor.

So in the accounting class required for my minor, I’ve been asked to write a paper on anything my pretty little heart desired, as long as it had something to do with accounting. Naturally, I pick the future of the journalism industry, and in particular newspapers.

I just “finished” the paper and turned it in, but it is in no way finished. I have more stuff to find out and more resources than I know what to do with (with the help of my new BFF, the journalism department’s dedicated librarian). So I want to start a series of blog posts, adding to the cacophany of already-established journalism bloggers who write about the future of journalism.

But here I want to emphasize hard numbers above lofty ideals, because frankly hard numbers scare me but that’s what we all need to look at. Journalists and math tend to go together like oil and water, but it’s the math that’s needed and sorely missing from the online resources I found. I suck at math, too, but I’m willing to push the data and discussions in a cohesive place and open it for discussion.

So I hope this works, and I hope this discovery process helps others too. Let me know if you know of any resources.

(Those of you in or near San Jose, California, go to my other post at sanjose.metblogs.com. I have more links for you there.)

If you live in the United States, I don’t have to remind you that we’re in the climax of election season and we should be getting our October Surprises any time now. But I do want to point you in the direction of quality unbiased information about what you’re going to vote for on Nov. 4. So please, for the love of God, don’t rely on relentless attack ads, cable TV pundits or political operatives who appear to do nothing but parrot talking points. Make your own decisions, and let these sites help inform:

Smart Voter
Enter your address and see everything that will be on the ballot in your neighborhood — every person running for your district, every measure that applies to your area. If you did not already get your voters’ guide in the mail, this is the perfect place to start.

Project Vote Smart
Look up your candidates and current office-holders by zip code, then easily find their voting record, public statements, speeches and videos. This site excels with the lesser-known local and state representatives. An invaluable resource.

Politifact
If you’re tired of trying to figure out which national candidate to believe, this is a great site to see quickly who just lied about what.

Factcheck
Another great fact-checking resource From the Annenberg Public Policy Center. This goes more in-depth than Politifact.

Open Secrets
Follow the money: see who is donating to candidates and elected officials.

Glassbooth
Still not sure who you’re voting for in the presidential race? This site will quiz you on your core values and match you with a candidate.

This morning I got up, looked forward to a productive day of freelance work, when I came across this story about the U.S. women’s soccer team in my newspaper and almost choked on my Cheerios:

First thought: Wait… whaaaaat… Did I just see that? Is that… um… WHAAAT?

Second thought: No.. I must be overreacting. There’s a logical explanation for this.

I looked up the word at Merriam-Webster, then at Urban Dictionary, (generally NSFW), just to be sure I wasn’t misunderstanding. Oh no, I wasn’t misunderstanding.

I couldn’t possibly be overreacting. This is serious, like employee-discipline serious, right? I posted my shock to Twitter and got these responses:

	boml @suzanneyada Wow, that is bad. And not an isolated case http://tinyurl.com/6rs8kt
	byline25 @suzanneyada That headline is tasteless. It is seriously one of the most offensive headlines I’ve ever seen in my life.
	MaryTrigiani @suzanneyada Where is Visalia? Don’t blame you for being irate.
	pickoffwhite @suzanneyada I find it pretty offensive. Especially as someone who plays/loves soccer.
	mikeoz @suzanneyada eeek. yeah, that’s not good. woobie @suzanneyada Yeah, that does seem to cross a line — would the run the same headline for the men’s team?

Boml’s link lead to a blog post about another paper in Australia who wrote a similar headline:

The debate with this one, though, is that “digger” has a different connotation down under. But even so, the caption on the news website has since been changed anyway.

So what excuse does that give a Californian paper? None.

I called up the senior editor, whom I respected when I worked there. He’s one of those old-time journalists, the kind who knows the news industry inside and out, has a million stories to tell, loves whisky and wears suspenders.

And he just… didn’t… quite… see… the problem… of that headline. And I had a hell of a time convincing him.

The first problem was that he told me I was the first person who called in to complain about the headline. I don’t believe that for one second. I called him at 11 am, well after the issue hit the streets. And this at a paper whose phone lines were flooded with calls once because someone put the word “freaking” in a headline. As in, “freaking cool.” Yeah.

So I had to explain to him the meaning of the term “gold digger” and that it’s a derogatory term for women who date richer men just for their money. He said he understood it could be taken offensively and tried to explain it was not meant to be taken in that context. I told him there was no other context to take — the headline would have never been used for the men’s soccer team. He tried to say it was for effect, that if they wrote the headline “Women’s Soccer Wins 3-2″ it wouldn’t have made as much of an impact. By then, I truly believe he forgot he was on the phone with me, someone that’s written headlines for them for three years. I know why they write headlines that aren’t straight-forward, I know how much labor it takes to making one headline as accurate as possible in the space allotted. This one seemed to be a filler headline the sports desk put in until they thought of a better one — and they never did change it.

He seemed sympathetic but wanted to stand his ground in the headline’s defense. I don’t think I made my message clear enough until I told him that there’s a strip joint in Bakersfield [my bad: Fresno] called Gold Diggers. That seemed to shut him up a bit.

I wonder if I spoke to the executive editor — a woman — I would have had a different reaction.

I just… I just can’t believe for a second I’m the only one in Visalia who called in. I’m outraged because a) this is MY paper, that I love and respect, b) I know the people behind it, and c) THEY KNOW BETTER!

…Or do they?

EDIT TO ADD: I’ve called a couple other editors and confirmed that yes, there pretty much was only one person who called in to complain. I don’t consider myself (or those who responded to my Twitter) a femi-Nazi-type. Am I off? Or is the town?

I was also told that the editor who wrote it truly didn’t realize how offensive it would be and meant no harm. I am just… confused. Really confused. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the one living in an alternate reality.

Volumes have already been said about Twitter in journalism. Poynter, Harvard and PBS chimed in, and Ryan Sholin gives journalists concrete ideas here.

My two cents:

• Twitter is only as useful as the people you follow and the people who follow you. If you don’t have the right people on either side of the equation, forget it. (Want a list of great journalistic Twitter users? Go here.)
• I found out about John Edwards’ affair, both Bernie Mac’s and Issac Hayes’ deaths and the Russia/Georgia conflict first on Twitter. But that’s not Twitter specifically — I find headlines on Yahoo, from people’s Myspace bulletins and Facebook status updates, in a local news email newsletter, AND in the dead-tree newspaper I read at the breakfast table. It just so happens that I’m addicted to Twitter and I check it more often than others. It’s just one more source of news to add to your arsenal.
• Unless it’s an earthquake and a million people are twittering the same thing at the same time, how is a news event going to be immediately dispersed to an audience as large as it needs? Twitter still has a comparatively small number of users. And unless the news itself has viral qualities, it will be broadcast to someone’s Twitter network and stop there.
• Only news stories that require just headlines and no context will be able to scoop the Associated Press (like the afore-mentioned OMGWTFBBQ EARTHQUAKE!!).
• We are taught in journalism school to answer who, what, where, when, why and how. Twitter forces us to distill all that information into 140 characters, which is a good thing, but also contributes to the ADD-like consumption of news, which is bad.
• Having said that, people do not use Twitter one tweet at a time. Many journalists see Twitter as nothing more than a headline-pusher. MISTAKE. It’s more than OK to have consecutive tweets that build off of one another, rather than having each news story self-contained.
• Ironically, instead of limiting reporters to 140 characters, Twitter frees reporters up to post little blips of color and context that would normally be edited out of the dead-tree edition. This excellent reporting experiment by Ron Sylvester shows how he used Twitter to update the public on a capital punishment trial. He published micro-bits of color and context as the trial went along. He says, “I cut and pasted all my ‘tweet’ updates into a traditional story file. It measured 80 inches.“
• The real power of my Twitter list is when people post a headline and follow it with a tinyurl to an interesting news story, blog or discussion. It’s like sending links to your friends without spamming or being intrusive — you can always unsubscribe.
• People, please don’t use Twitter as simply a way to rewire an RSS feed. RSS feeds often lead to too many tweets. And if you tweet too much, I de-friend you. Simple as that. Have an actual person be behind it — one of the reasons people will subscribe to your Twitter feed is because it seems so much more personal and one-on-one with the people behind the news media.
• Don’t ever, EVER call me a Twitterling, a Tweetster or Tweeple. I am a Twitter user, not a member of the Mickey Mouse Club.

My last post took very wide liberties with the definition of journalism (and thanks, Eshu, for the link). Sure, this is a classic example of low redefinition, and sure, it was to prove a point, to bring the idea of “journalism” out of the newspapers and into everyday lives. I mean, really, what use is it to pretend your 3-year-old is practicing journalism? Not much, other than to paint a mental image of the craft being practiced without any intention of it.

But the real question is, in practicality, when does it stop being called communication and starts deserving the term journalism?

Merriam-Webster says journalism is “the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media.” OK, so what’s news? Is “Mommy, my diaper needs changing” news? (And does it qualify for the “hyperlocal” definition?) Is screaming “a medium” with which to broadcast to the entire goddamn supermarket? Technically speaking, yes. Practically speaking, no.

Does that make other screaming 3-year-olds such as Bill O’Reilly and Michael Moore journalists? Only by the most basic definition, but they’re using a particular kind of journalism that isn’t looked upon too kindly by others in the business. It’s called “crap,” and it definitely requires a whole ‘nuther blog post to explain.

But back to this. That Merriam-Webster also mentions “editing” in its definition, which has in itself shifted workable definitions with the coming of the journo-bloggers. You don’t have to pass your content through an “editor” anymore, but in a way you’re still editing by simply selecting what to post and what not to, what deserves a one-sentence blurb and what needs a full write-up. But I speak from experience that it is nigh impossible to truly edit your own work. And editing by a second pair of eyes is unfortunately no longer a true prerequisite of journalism.

In fact, being READ by a second pair of eyes is no longer a true prerequisite, either. You can have an audience of zero and still do quality journalism. (If a journalist blogs in the forest and no one is around to hear it, is it still news?)

If that’s not enough to make your head spin, let me ask this question: How does journalism differ from, say, PR and advertising, which are subjects usually taught in the same school at many universities? You’re communicating, sometimes even communicating news, for presentation in the media.

Ah, but that discussion, too, will have to be saved for another post. I’m antsy to get deeper with this, to inform my journo readers with things they didn’t already hear in j-school, as well as my non-journo friends with creative uses for everyday journalism skills. I’m also always open to your feedback and ideas, because I’ll be damned to hell if I know everything about this stuff.

But these are thoughts to keep tumbling in your mind as 1) a news consumer and 2) a news creator. Is Merriam-Webster’s definition enough? When is it journalism, when is it PR and advertising, and when is it just a toddler with a temper tantrum in aisle 3?

Forgive me if I sound a bit Socratic, but before I dig deep into this blog, we need to get a nagging question out of the way, because the answer isn’t as simple as it was before.

Ahem.

What is journalism?

My Mac OSX dictionary widget, which is totally modern and cool, gives this definition, which is totally not:

“\ˈjər-nə-ˌli-zəm\ The activity or profession of writing for newspapers or magazines or of broadcasting news on radio or television.”

This leaves bloggers and online media out entirely. So screw that definition. Merriam-Webster offers more sensible definitions here, and PressThink has an amazing in-depth discussion on the evolving meaning of the word here. But for the purpose of this blog, let me try and break it down into three steps:

1. Take raw information.
2. Interpret it.
3. Share it.

Surprise, surprise, that’s the same three parts found in the basic definition for communication.

Which means that everyone who speaks or writes performs at least a basic, unintentional form of journalism.

Which is the point of this blog.

Journalism is not a profession, is not a medium, is not a prerequisite degree and is not dependent on the size of your audience. It is a way of thinking. It is an everyday human occurrence, intentional or not.

Now, not everyone is going to agree with me that 3-year-olds are, at a very basic level, journalists. (Some would say the 3-year-olds are already better journalists than the ones we got.) But there are several levels of journalism, and I’ll get into that for the next post. My goal with this blog is to explore the ways we all could step it up a notch or two when these everyday opportunities arise.

So stick with me; I’m setting this up as best as I can before we can get to the fun part. Once we get some basic explanations out of the way, this will be more like a blog and less like a book.

I spent a lot of time brainstorming, researching and brainstorming some more about this here blog, wanting to offer something different from all the other quality journo blogs on the Internet. So much good stuff is out there, and it’s hard to say anything new. But in journalism, it’s your job to find the uncovered angles, the fresh way of storytelling, the observances that pass by without pause, the information you need that’s hopelessly buried in the information you don’t.

My mind’s performance skills are pitch perfect at around 2 a.m., especially on nights when I have any amount of post-sundown caffeine in my system. So on one of these particular nights, my eyes flipped open at exactly that time, my brain twitched, and *SPLAT!* Out popped an idea.

I would write about everyday journalism.

My brain twiched again, because frankly that’s a boring idea in itself. Just the words “everyday journalism” sound so bland and average, so *THUMP!* Out spilled some more ideas.

I could illustrate how slices of everyday life can be observed through the eyes of journalism — that is, to flesh out color and information to capture the beauty, usefulness and importance of these moments.

*SCHPLOOSH!*

I would chronicle my own humble attempts to seize everyday opportunities to become a better journalist.

*KERPLUNK!*

I would write about the everyday circumstances in which people commit “random acts of journalism.” This is not just another “citizen journalism” ploy here, although that movement certainly has a part in the conversation. This is more about the level of journalism a woman in Des Moines employs when trying to buy a new car.

*KAPLOWIEZOWIESPLOPP!*

I would outline what it means to dig deeper, harder, better, faster, stronger, through the “average everyday journalism” level to the “extraordinary everyday journalism” level. Because here’s the real confession: I’m nowhere near the extraordinary level. Not even close.

But I’m inviting you along on my journey.