Increased Viewership In Sight

Interesting news today that the Oscar-nominated documentary "No End in Sight," about the early stages of the Iraq War, will be screened on YouTube starting in September and running through the November election.

Filmmaker Charles Ferguson is quoted as saying that he wants to make the film "accessible to a larger group of people." Makes you wonder what would have happened had YouTube been around for Michael Moore to screen "Fahrenheit 9/11" before the 2004 election.

Should J-Schools Teach Blogging?

By any measure, it's been a trying few years for journalism and j-schools. No need to rehash the past, but it's worth talking about pedagogy of the future. Namely, blogging. It's already here in a big way at national publications -- just count the number of reporters churning out bite-sized news nuggets for their blogs about the Democratic National Convention this week.

And, in my estimation, it's not long until every beat reporter at a major daily/Web pub/radio station/local TV station is required to post news/analysis several times a day. In some cases it might help them do their jobs better by pushing sources for constant information, and by forcing them to figure out in real-time what news is most important. It might also be considered a hindrance -- how does one flesh out a multi-source feature article on deadline while also feeding a blog?

With beat blogging becoming a fixture, what's a j-school to do? Blogging has been worked into the curriculum for years, but it's yet to become a mainstay. Should it be taught as part of newswriting courses? Should there even be a separate course?

I'd break down the issue into two questions:

1. Should j-schools teach students how to quickly process information, write and edit? Yes, yes and yes. At the summer journalism program where I teach, an exercise called "rotating rewrites" calls upon students to take a series of facts and work them into a one-sentence news lead. Students are asked to write and rewrite that lead until we the instructors think they have it right. To some extent, this skill has long been taught in classes -- in the past it meant being able to file one article for an evening deadline; now it means filing clean, informative copy several times a day.

2. Should the schools teach students how to be pithy, write in short form and interact with readers? Ok, I'm unfailry lumping all blogs together, but you get the point. Journalists develop their own blogging style. Editors have different expectations. Teaching the "art of blogging" is futile, given that the industry standards are rapidly changing along with the technology. Assign students to practice blogging on their own time. Teach them how to write punchy leads and headlines. By all means teach editorial writing (not that all blogs are opinion-laden.) Just don't get bogged down with making blogging a part of every class assignment. Much like time management itself, it's a skill best learned on the job.

My former colleague at Inside Higher Ed wrote recently about j-schools trying to stay fresh by adding courses that emphasize reporting across media platforms. More power to them. Still, many readers posted comments below the article saying, in one way or another, "don't forget about teaching core journalism skills."

My addendum: Yes, but stress speed and accuracy.

Playing Right Along?

Two of the most provocative media pieces to come out this month both relate broadly to the theme of journalists craving news to break and politicians going out of their way to pass it along to audiences themselves.

David Carr's NY Times story focuses on Barack Obama's press strategy of speaking directly to Democratic voters through text messages and notes on the campaign Web site, rather than through leaks to the media. Saturday's 3 a.m. text about Joe Biden as VP is just the latest example.

From many accounts, despite the Obama camp's up-front announcement that it would alert folks through texting, reporters still were in a frenzy to break the news themselves. This included frantically calling campaign sources to get a revised "short list," and checking cell phones every five minutes for updates.

There's nothing wrong, of course, with some good-old-fashioned hustle, but why all the effort on this story? Picture Obama standing on a desk, tossing a paper airplane to John Q Public with the words "Biden's My Man" written on the wings. Then tilt down to see a swarm of wee reporters jumping as high as they can to grab the darn thing out of the air... na na na na na, you can't get it!

The press is getting played, and for what? So that a news organization can claim that it saw the text first at 2:45 a.m. and post the news on its Web site -- which who, exactly is reading at that hour? -- five minutes before a competitor has it up. The stories about speculation make for good office fodder, sure. But what's the value to readers/listeners?

Slate columnist Jack Shafer points out the absurdity of the great veepstakes information chase. "If Obama is guilty of gaming the press to sustain interest in his campaign, his partner in crime is John McCain, who as early as May 21 was auditioning potential vice presidents and continues the tease this week," he writes.

It's best to view this episode as a teachable moment. Instead of getting caught up in the fracas, why not report on the story for what it is -- a game of information keep-away. Do as Carr and Shafer did and write about the implications of politicians speaking directly to their constituents, and what role the media has in setting the agenda.

That way, readers can only complain about getting woken up by an early morning message -- and not about the press latching onto any speculation about a horse race that isn't even the main event.

Media Articles

I'm already breaking my promise to be outward-focused in this space, but before I get to commentary and whatnot I want to link to a few media-related articles I've done recently.

One of my favorites is about how the news media cover campus violence. Less than a year after the Virginia Tech shootings, reporters planted themselves on Northern Illinois University's campus in suburban Chicago. While coverage of this shooting rampage wasn't as all-encompassing as the reportage from Blacksburg, Va., (morning show anchors didn't show up in DeKalb, for one), the NIU shootings did receive quite a bit more coverage nationally than did a campus attack earlier in the week at Louisiana Technical College’s Baton Rouge campus. Journalism professors, media commentators and others sounded off on why certain violent outbursts tend to receive the lion's share of attention.

On a completely different subject, here's a piece I did about a new product that offers athletics departments help tracking what their players are writing on the two most popular social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace. This gets at the issue of whether athletes should be held to a different standard than students when it comes to projecting a positive image of a university. And, perhaps more to the point of this blog, it's an example of software that users say is invaluable but some argue is too invasive.

On yet another note, this is a feature story on a Pitzer College course called "Learning From YouTube." The interesting hook here is that the class not only focused on the Google-owned site, but the professor asked students to post all of their assignments on YouTube, and she taped the entire course and posted the videos for all to see.

Finally, here's a short story I did about a viral video that explains -- and demonstrates --Web 2.0.

The Lead

So, the last thing I want to do is make this a blog about me. I'm not a fan of the personal chronicle. And this won't be. Promise.

Having said that, and having already used the word "I" three times in the first 40 words, endulge me while I get some of the background info out of the way. My life in journalism consists of five plus years as a reporter for newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and Web sites like Inside Higher Ed, two summers of teaching writing and editing at a summer journalism program, four years of studying journalism at Northwestern University, and several years of writing articles before that -- including putting together a family newsletter that would years later make for great college essay material.

I'm currently living in St. Louis and freelancing for the city's new online news site, the St. Louis Beacon. That's all I have to say on that front, but (self-promotion alert) my other site, http://www.eliapowers.com/, has links to other work that I've done.

My plan here is to link to interesting media commentary and news, write some of my own, and discuss the future -- and current state -- of journalism education. Why I am interested in all that? Well, as a reporter, my career is dependent on a thriving media industry. And I'd like to be a part of writing about trends, new ideas, old complaints, etc. Plus, I'm interested in continuing my teaching career.

With that, a word-for-word explanation of how I named this site. It's instructive in that it has lots to do with two of my favorite media shows.

"This": A nod to the ever-popular Chicago Public Radio slice-of-life radio program "This American Life." If I can be anything like a print version of Ira Glass, I'll have done my job.

"Media": I suppose this could be anything. But I'll go with my favorite media news show, WNYC's "On the Media." For non-listeners, it's an hour-long radio program that includes commentary and reporting about the media, broadly defined: journalism, advertising, technology, etc. Very informative for anyone in the biz.

"Moment": Notice I said "two of my favorite media shows." I won't lie, this third word just sounded right. But I'll make up another story. One of my favorite times of the year is March --and the NCAA basketball tournament. One of my favorite parts of March Madness is at the very end, when CBS plays a sappy (but still lovable) anthem called "One Shining Moment" that's recorded by Luther Vandross. Here's a version of the song set to video of my beloved Washington Huskies:

And there you have it.