Save the Media

As journalism evolves, re-invents, whichever action verb you’d like, I think we need to pay more attention to how news gathering is changing — or should be changing. Yes, crowdsourcing — when a news organization uses a large group of regular folks to report a story — gets a lot of ink, but I’m not talking about that.

I’m talking about journalists taking full advantage of online tools to gather information. A series of posts Vadim Lavrusik wrote for Mashable illustrates my point. He gathered a bunch of media/journo types, including me, on a private Google Wave and then suggested topics for us to discuss amongst ourselves. We were warned in advance that he’d be quoting us for possible blog posts. (Our Google Wave chat yielded these four posts: journalist of the future, business trends, content trends, media collaboration).

Read the rest of the post at the Nieman Journalism Lab.

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Time for some short-takes of cool journalism-related stuff you should be reading around the blogosphere:

Social media goes mainstream: So finally, being on social media has stopped being gee whiz and started being, well, normal. Manish Mehtma sums this point up well in this Huffington Post blog item. He notes that this process of normalizing will allow the technology to fade into the background — so people focus on the relationships created, not the tool. True. For the news media, I think (I hope) this will mean more embracing of tools as tools — rather than writing about the fact that people use them. Kevin Sablan, of Almighty Link, puts it well:  “Tales of journalists using social media, and non-journalists committing acts of journalism using social tools, are starting to sound like stories of people using their telephones.” Amen.

Has social media changed us? Yes, for sure.  They naysayers say it’s turning our brains to mush, just as every technology since paper was feared to do. Advocates, like me, say social media is a tool that can be used for evil or good. Mike Laurie has a good list on Mashable of how social media has changed life for the better. Not sure I buy the one about social media helping kids be more literate. But I definitely agree social media has made news and political involvement more accessible to everyone, particularly young people. That’s a good thing.

FourSquare: I’ve just joined FourSquare. So far, not sure what I’ll use if for, but I think us journajunkies need to be knowledgeable about what’s out there — and the best way to gain knowledge is to try it. Lehigh University journalism professor Jeremy Littau has some interesting ideas on how to use FourSquare journalistically.  He suggests it could be a place where journalists can put news — like a business failing a health inspection — that now gets lost in a sea of information online and in print. It’s an interesting idea. FourSquare, from what I gather, is geographically based, which could make is useful, especially for local newspapers. It’s worth exploring.

The basics: In today’s constantly changing journalism world, the basics can get forgotten. Don’t let them. Bad writing is bad writing whether it’s on paper, online, on Twitter or on GoogleWave. Some good reminders of this point come from Steve and Emilie Davis, journalism profs at Syracuse University, on their new blog. Here is their take on cliches.

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The legacy press or the traditional media or whatever we’re calling newspapers these days has one main challenge for 2010. And it’s not finding a new business model, although, of course, that’s important, too.

But the main challenge has nothing to do with business plans. It has to do with vision. It has to do with being able to imagine a world that does not yet exist.

While the news media’s woes come from lagging ad rates and content that’s scooped up (or stolen, depending on your perspective) by aggregrators, these are all symptoms of the main problem. The true problem for the media is an inability to imagine what media consumption will look like in one, five, 10 years.

Read the rest of the post at Nieman Journalism Lab.

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Happy 2010, readers! Wow. We survived what was quite the troubling year in journalism, and, I think, really, that journalism is better for it. Yes, there’s been too many layoffs, pay cuts, buyouts. But I think the economic woes have forced news organizations to rethink how they gather and deliver news — and that’s a wonderful thing.

A year ago, I came up with my 10 hopes for journalists in 2009. As part of the introspection that comes with the passing of a year — and a decade — here is my list of 10 hopes for journalists in 2010. (And, by the way, my hopes for 2009 still hold true.) Please share your own hopes in the comments. And here’s to a better year for journalism!

1. Realize it’s not just the economy: I hope in 2010, as the economy improves, journalists will realize that the downturn for newspapers wasn’t just from recession-induced lagging ad sales. Yes, that hurt. Yes, that hastened the pain for newspapers. But it would be a mistake to think that once the economy improves, everything will go back to normal. It won’t. See the recession as the wake-up call that is should be.

My parish priest told a story at Mass a few weeks back that, I think, explains what I mean. He told about a man who was stranded on a desert island with no hope of rescue. He made a life for himself, built a hut and struggled to survive. One day, the hut caught fire and burned to the ground. He thought: Why? Then a rescue helicopter arrived. If it weren’t for the smoke from the fire, the helicopter pilot would not have seen him. The moral: Sometimes our hut needs to burn down, so we can move onto where we need to go. Newspapers, your hut burned down for a reason — so you’d change your business. So do it.

2. Remove the sneer: All too often I read newspaper stories about people using social media that seem to portray the people as oddities. I know that’s part of journalistic routines: The odd is more newsworthy than the every day. But if newspapers continue to subtly portray social media users as exceptions to the norm, the weird techies, they will miss out on understanding what social media means in people’s lives. Yes, we’re in the minority in the general American population, but we’re a minority that going to grow and grow, as social media evolves. And then, dear newspapers, won’t you look silly?

3. Lead don’t follow:  This is a corollary to my point in Number 2. If you’re treating social media use like this weird techie thing, you’re not embracing it. You’re not figuring out how to use it for journalism. That’s a shame and a missed opportunity. Journalists should be leading in how to use and explain social media to readers, not sitting on the sidelines bragging that you don’t get social media as if that’s something to be proud of. It’s not. It’s like the reporters who argued in the ’80s that they’d prefer a typewriter to a computer. It’s just silly. News organizations need to make sense of the world for readers, so they should figure out how to use Twitter or Google Wave and explain that to their readers. Granted, some newspapers are doing a fabulous job of this. Far too many are not.

4. Changing your news-gathering: In the old days, the news gathering followed a pretty simple pattern. Source > Journalist >Reader. This has all changed, and news organizations’ methods of gathering and disseminating news must change with it. Some stories might be Reader>Journalist>Reader. Others might be Source>Reader>Journalist>Reader. Others might drop the linear model altogether and end up with multiple readers offering multiple ideas to multiple sources, and then a journalist uniting it. I’m talking crowd-sourcing here and curating. But I’m also talking more creativity even when the journalist is doing the gathering. (Stayed tune for a specific post on this later this month.)

5. Add some new blood: I know economically news organizations are really strapped, so it’s hardly the time to hire young people. But you must find a way to do this soon. I believe newspapers cannot truly transform themselves without adding some young voices to the mix. It’s not that the old-timers don’t have value. They do. But you need both. It’s unhealthy for an organization to go years and years without hiring new people, especially in an industry that is trying to reinvent itself in a rapidly changing world. If you don’t do this, these smart, young, recent journalism graduates will get jobs elsewhere for digital news operations that kick your butt. A quote from David Carr on BuzzMachine sums up well the value of young journalists: They don’t have to think out of the box because they were never in one to begin with.

6. Don’t play lip-service: I find that many online news Web sites from traditional media outlets offer innovation, but way less than people are growing to expect from interactive news. Having the capacity to comment or vote on stories isn’t enough anymore. That is, as my kids would say, “So 30 seconds ago.” The interaction must be intrinsic to the whole information experience. News organizations need to offer multiple options for receiving and interacting, but they must — and this is key — explain to their readers how to use them. Letting folks vote on stories, but giving no obvious guidelines on how they do this means it will fail. Simple. Only the diehards will try. The regular readers won’t. So you’ll end up with little meaningful interaction and just a lot of flaming.

7. Learn the lingo: Nothing makes the legacy press seems like the ancient, out-0f-touch press than not understanding the current technologies. I’d argue that pretty much any paper of any size today should have someone covering technology, blogging about it, and explaining it to readers. As I said in Number 2, being out of the loop is nothing to be proud of. It’s not a sign that you’re a true journalist fighting for a return to the old-time newspapering in a world that has gone all crazy 3.0. It just makes you look out of touch. Journalists are supposed to know how to explain things in which they are not experts. So do that. (And I don’t just mean the one or two people on staff who are into the new stuff; I mean everybody.) Read blogs, not just news sites. Experiment. Find out the buzz. Get educated.

8. Market yourself: At newspapers, the advertising and marketing folks are often on a separate floor from the newsroom. It’s a physical split that follows a philosophical division between those who gather the news and those who sell it. I believe this split is still important. However, journalists need to learn a bit from their marketing colleagues about selling themselves. Marketing works. If you’re doing something amazing or innovative, you need to let your readers know that loud and clear and more than one. If the print tells of a great interactive graphic online, but the reader can’t find it, you’ve lost. So many newspapers are doing wonderful, creative experiments, but readers need some help in finding these things. They spend seconds on your site, and if they can’t find what they’re looking for, they’re gone. You can change that. Make things easy to find, and shout it. Don’t feel like you’re breaching some journalistic ethos by bragging. If you whisper, no one will hear you.

9. Brand yourself: It used to be that journalists, at least at newspapers, were anonymous almost. Sure, they had a byline, but who read that expect pundits, other journalists, and angry government officials. TV reporters got recognized on the street, but those with a face for newspapers didn’t have to worry about that. Today, journalists must create their own persona online. They need a blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account. They need to use their real name and picture. Yes, support the news organizations’ brand, but journalists also need to develop their own brand on the Web.

Why? The Web is based on what Wired editor Chris Anderson calls “reputational currency.” People gain believability on the Web as they build their own personal reputations. (Not just the reputation of their employer.) R. David Lankes, a Syracuse University professor, writes the people view others as credible on the Web today based on reliability, not authority. So you believe blogger A because she says the same thing that four other bloggers you like says, not because she’s a bonafide expert. Tom Kelleher and Barbara Miller, professors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, found that the people see online communications that use the “conversational human voice” as more trustworthy than more static communication.

To me, these concepts converge. To be seen as credible, journalists need to have their names out there so they can build a reputation. They also need to use the conversational human voice and fit their message into the context of online communities. If they do that, people will feel like they kind of know them, so they’ll trust them more.

10. Have fun again: It’s been a tough year. It’s understandable that journalists feel beaten down, bewildered, angry, confused, bitter, ambivalent. The list could go on and on. But being a journalist is, as a friend’s father told her when she choose the career two decades ago, a noble profession. It still is. And it’s fun. There’s nothing like the adrenaline rush of breaking a big story, beating your competition, standing up to authority and making changes. I know in the past year, it was hard to remember this as it appeared the floor was collapsing beneath you. I know because I lived it, too. Newsrooms are full of sadness today, for lost colleagues, a lost way of life. That’s normal. But, please, remember why you got into the business. Rise to that occasion. Have fun again. Your readers need you.

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Well, readers. I feel a bit like Jeff Jarvis or Heather Armstrong today.

Both of them are high-profile bloggers, who had customer-service nightmares that they took to the blogosphere and won. Jarvis, is a City University of New York journalism professor who blogs at BuzzMachine and had a heck of a time with a Dell computer. He got some media attention for his plight.

Armstrong is probably the most popular mommy blogger on the planet. She bought a pricey Maytag; it failed. She blogged about it on Dooce and encouraged her tweeps to boycott. She got media coverage of her rants.

In the end, the companies listened. (After lots of aggravation, of course.)

Now I’m no Jarvis or Armstrong. They are celebrities. I’m just me, a former journalist now student who loves social media and hates getting ripped off.

But I think my experience illustrates the power of social media. My saga began the week before Christmas when my 11-year-old dryer failed. I headed to Sears, bought a new one, a nicer model than I’d had before but still a relatively cheap one.

Aborted delivery attempts

Delivery was scheduled for the next day. Delivery guys never showed. Mid-day, I called and was told delivery had been canceled because of some snafu that I didn’t really get. No biggie. They were coming the next day.

The next day (Christmas Eve) they arrive, but the dryer was stolen off the truck at an earlier delivery that day.  They don’t realize this until they’ve yanked out my old dryer. Again, I don’t sweat it. It happens. It’s not the guys’ fault (although I’d suggest locking the truck next time during an install.)

Because of the holiday, the delivery isn’t scheduled again until Dec. 29.  That’s fine. My family is getting used wearing the clothes in the back of the closet that they don’t really like. Some people have real problems, I tell my friends. This isn’t a big deal.

Dryer arrives

Dec. 29: The guys deliver the dryer, set it up and test it. Seems fine, they say. I’m tired, so I don’t bother to do laundry until the next day. Then I put in a load; it comes out still wet. I re-read the owner’s manual to make sure I’m doing everything right. I’m fairly intelligent. My, God, I’m getting my Ph.D. I should be able to read a dryer instruction manual.

It appears this dryer has a sensor that is supposed to sense when the clothes are dry. It appears not to be working. I run the dryer through several cycles, and finally get some things dry. But the sweats, jeans are still damp.

I’m annoyed but am trying to keep my Zen-like calm. So I wait until Dec. 31 to try it again. I put a load in on high moisture, which is supposed to be the highest setting — for thick towels and such. The dryer spins for more than two hours before I open the door to see what’s up. The clothes are still wet, and cold. I’m guessing it spins but no heat.

The end

I’m done. After the two aborted delivery attempts and now this, I just don’t want this dryer anymore. I don’t want a new dryer that needs to be fixed. I don’t want a dryer that breaks before I even get to use it.

10:30 a.m. Dec. 31:  I call customer service. After about 40 minutes on hold, I reach a person, who tells me she can send a truck to pick up the dryer, but she can’t handle the refund. I need to call the store, but she doesn’t have a number. I ask to speak to a manager. I’m transferred to a non-working number that disconnects me.

I get a number for the store off the Web. I reach a nice woman, who is very apologetic and says she’ll transfer me to someone who can help. I end up at the same customer service number where I started, and again reach a person who says she cannot issue a refund. I must call the store.

I call the store, get bounced back to customer service. Finally, I get a person who says I’ll be refunded after workers pick up the old dryer. That’s fine with me. What about the delivery costs? The original Sears pitch was free delivery, but you had to send in a rebate to get the delivery refunded. Now that I don’t want the dryer, it seems ridiculous to spend $65 or whatever for delivery of a product that doesn’t work, that I don’t want, and that has caused me more than my fair share of aggravation.

I’m told that the delivery costs are nonrefundable. I ask to speak to a manager. I’m told I can’t. I explain that there is always a way to please the customer, and I’d like to speak to someone empowered to do that. No luck. The person transfers me to an answering machine.

This scenario repeats for the good portion of the day. Sometimes, I’m told I can’t get a refund. I’m always told the delivery costs are nonrefundable. In the meantime, I’m tweeting about it vigorously, and posting many of the tweets on Facebook.

There is some consistency. By and large, the customer service rep at the 800 number says to call the store; I call the store, who transfers me back to the customer service at the 800 number. Then I try another 800 number of the Web or in the phone book. The same scenario repeats, with me waiting on hold at least 30 minutes each time. I don’t know what to do.

I swear I end up talking to the same person several different times, and she gives me different answers, getting indignant. Now, I’ll admit, I started out calm, but I lost my Zen-like calm as time went on. I think anyone but Gandhi would have.

Finally, thanks to Twitter. I get some relief. Some tweeps of mine started retweeting my Sears story with the #Sears hashtags. This gets Sears’ attention, and a higher-up customer service representative direct messaged me, asking if he could help. I DM my home phone; he calls and is very helpful. He has Sears Customer Care call me. The woman there, agrees — finally — to refund my delivery costs and give me all my money back.

Phew. It only took about four hours on the phone or on hold, talking to about nine people from Sears and a whole lot of what my dad call agita. I’m glad I’ll get a refund, but I can’t imagine anything that would compel me to shop at Sears again.

I’m heartened that social media gave me at the very least a place to express my frustration in a supportive community. The worst part of these customer-service nightmares is the sense of powerlessness you feel. I’m just one stupid person that this company couldn’t care less about. On Twitter, I was still just one person, but it did get Sears to pay attention. Finally.

Social media has given power to the people. Yes, celebrities like Jarvis and Armstrong, but also little people like me. That’s a good thing. In the old days, I would have told my girlfriends about my experience over a glass wine. Today, I can tell thousands of people with a touch of a button.

The lessons

So dear companies (especially, you, Sears) here are things to keep in mind about customer service in this new media climate.

1. Be clear: You should have clear information about where to call for customer service on your Web site. As a customer, I shouldn’t have to know your internal companies policies to know which of your customer service numbers is right for me. I shouldn’t have to get stuck in a loop of automated answers, none of which apply to my problem. And, if, God forbid, I call the wrong customer service number, I should reach someone who cheerfully gives me the correct number, not who tells me they have no idea where I should call.

2. Be human: OK, we know it saves you money to use automated answering machines. But please, please always offer an option for me to opt out and reach a person. It is insanely frustrating to sit on a phone, listening again and again to a list of options that don’t apply to you.

3. Be helpful: I hope this won’t sound racist. I don’t mean it to be. I know you farm out customer service overseas to save money. But those overseas reps MUST have a list of alternative phone numbers where a customer can reach someone else. It adds to the tension of a frustration situation when you can’t understand what the customer service rep is saying, and all he or she does is keep repeating a prepared script that isn’t relevant. It’s maddening.

4. Be accountable: Always and I mean always let a customer reach a manager. Don’t transfer them to a nonworking number. Don’t transfer them to an answering machine. Angry customers who want a manager should be able to reach one. Don’t tel the customer: “Well, he’s just going to say what I said.” There’s always a way to solve a problem. There’s always a way to make an exception for an unsatisfied customer. At least, there should be.

5. Be responsive: Kudos for responding to social media, but it really shouldn’t have to get public for you to listen. As I told the last Sears person I spoke with — the one who actually helped:  Sears could have kept me as a customer if I could have reached a manager who could help me at 11 a.m. on my first or even second call. The fact that I had to sit on hold for hours, go through rep after rep who didn’t help, and tweet my heart about the issue … well, that cost you a customer. I think most people can understand that companies make mistakes. But when mistake start piling up like snow in Syracuse, sorry, you’ve lost me.

6. Listen: The biggest problem I had was customer service reps who would repeat company policy robotlike and not listen to what I was saying. Yes, I realize you have policies. But if you have no ability to see the problem through my eyes, you’ve lost me. I can buy a dryer anywhere, really. And I’ve been on this Earth long enough to know that if I was someone important in your eyes, you’d make me happy. So the fact that you don’t care if I’m satisified, that just reinforces what I already know: You don’t value me as a customer.

7. Be reasonable: I can understand telling me no if I was asking for something preposterous or out of whack with the damage. Hey, you delivered a dryer that didn’t work, so I want a new dryer for free and a better one than I bought. I can see you saying no to that. But all I asked for was my money back for a product that was used once and doesn’t work. That seems reasonable.

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I can hardly believe it has been more than a year since I started this blog. Back in those early days, I had hardly any readers. I was writing for myself, but bit by bit some of you started to read. I thank all of you for that. I appreciate your comments, your interest in what I have to say, and your ideas for the transformation of journalism. I hope to see you around the blogosphere in 2010.

Here are the 10 posts from Save the Media that you made popular in the past year:

1. 10 “journalism rules” you can break on your blog. This one raised the biggest buzz of anything I’ve written. Some liked it. Others didn’t. But it is safe to say this post got a lot of people thinking, which is always a good move in my book.

2. How Journalism Can Change. The credit for this one goes to my former Post-Standard colleague, Amber Smith. She blogs about health and fitness.

3. Top Twitter told for journalists. How to use Twitter as a journalistic tool, not just for telling people what you had for lunch.

4. A journalist’s guide to the ethics of social media. Is ethical social media use an oxymoron? I think not. I explain that ethics in social media are just like ethics anywhere else. Right is right.

5. Is blogging journalism? Yes and no. Blogging, I write is a tool, like newsprint or airwaves. Blogging can certainly be used for journalism, but not every blog is journalism.

6. The “hyperinterest” approach to news. What’s hyperinterest? It’s tailored to the niche. It’s specific to the audience.

7. Twitter etiquette, style rules for 2010. My take on the rules of Twitter.

8. How journalists can use Facebook.  Facebook is fun, but it’s also useful as a reporting, crowd-sourcing and community-building tool. Here’s how.

9. More on newspapers social media rules. This was about the ongoing hub-bub about The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal coming up with rules for how their staff use social media.

10. So what’s journalism? Folks on Twitter and yours truly tried to come up with a definition in today’s changing media climate.

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Twitter turns 4 in the new year, so I think it’s old enough to learn some manners. Here are my suggestions for Twitter etiquette and style as we head into 2010.  I’m sure I’ve missed some ideas, so feel free to add in the comments.

To tweet or to twitter: I think it has been well-established by now on Twitter that the verb is to tweet. I tweet today; I tweeted yesterday; I have tweeted many times. Twitter is not the verb. To twitter is something a bird does, by emitting chirping sounds. People don’t twitter. And certainly, please, dear journalists, let’s not switch back and forth between tweet and twitter as a verb. You wouldn’t do that with any other verb.

Twitterati: I think there is more ambiguity about the noun to describe people who use Twitter. Are they tweets or twits or twitterati? I, personally, prefer tweets over twits. But I like tweeps even more. Tweets feels a bit like saying, “Hey, these are my peeps.” But I’m not opposed to Twitterati, as long as it is used as a plural for both men and women on Twitter. Then, following the rule for Latin endings, one man on Twitter would be a Twitteratus; one woman, a Twitterata; a group of women, Twitteratae. Perhaps that gets too formal. Twitter user is also fine.

Twitterverse vs. Twittersphere: My preference for describing the whole world of Twitter is Twitterverse, mainly because I think Twitterverse sounds better than Twittersphere. (However, I much prefer blogosphere to blogoverse.) Yet, I think both are correct.

Thank you: I think a culture has developed on Twitter where it makes sense to thank people for retweeting your blog post or adding you to their Twitter lists. I think it’s fine, but not necessary, to thank people for following you. But, please, let’s outlaw this too-pervasive practice of thanking people through automatic direct messages, especially those that tout an e-book or blog. Why? Because that’s just spam in the clothing of faux friendship. I like to compare Twitter to a party. If you walked in and introduced yourself by saying, “Hi, read my book,” I probably wouldn’t talk to you much. You can tout your book — just wait to we have some semblance of a relationship.

Retweets: In the old days (like a year ago), people typed the word retweet before they retweeted (repeated) another person’s tweet. Today, that has been shortened to RT. But always be sure to credit the original person who tweeted. (Via @username works well.)  My rules on retweeting that others may or may not embrace is this: If you retweet, you can shorten the original tweet to fit the 140-character limit. But do not change the gist or meaning. That seems like misquoting, to me.

@Replies: Twitter is a conversational medium. People say things; other people respond. But when a one-on-one conversation goes beyond two or more tweets, it’s time to take the conversation outside — to direct messaging. A group discussion is fine to have on Twitter, I think. But when two people just talk exclusively through @replies, it feels a bit like listening to a stranger’s yelled cell phone conversation. Lower your voice, please. But if the topic is general and might be of interest to others — feel free to chat away without heading to the DMs.

1/2; 2/2: Twitter’s 140-character limit can seem restricting, but it doesn’t have to be. If you have more to say than can fit in 140 characters, use this approach. 1/2 at the start of  a tweet or @replies means: first part of two parts. The second part is 2/2. Now, I’d advice using this sparingly because often — but not always — the best route is to edit yourself. Also, the 1/2, 2/2 trick theoretically could be used for tweet, but in practice it is usually reserved for @replies and direct messages.

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Edited: 10:37 a.m. Dec. 29. Here’s what’s great about Twitter. I wrote this post, tweeted it, and within minutes got some smart comments froma fellow Twitter user, Frank D’Agostino, of Syracuse. I added his suggestions in italics, so it’s clear they came later than the rest of the post.

Edited: 11:25 a.m. Dec. 31. It’s official. Based on comments on this blog and suggestions on Twitter, I’m  updating my post to reflect my new belief that tweeps is the preferred term for people on Twitter.

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Haven’t done short-takes for a while, so seems like it is time for my list of interesting stuff from around the blogosphere.

Great blogs: I love lists. I think they are a very useful way to convey a lot of information quickly in a format that’s easy to read.  Journalistics has compiled a great list of blogs about all things journalism — from citizen reporting to commentary to academia. Full disclosure: I’m humbled to have made the list, but even if I didn’t, I’d be linking to it and saving it as a delicious bookmark for future reference. You should, too.

Twitter list:  Have you started listing on Twitter yet? If not, you should. At the very least, it’s an easy way to keep track of the people you follow on Twitter by categorizing them into topics (journalists, academics, moms.) I find my lists are a good way to sort through the people I follow and to find smart new to follow from the lists of other people. Twitter lists also can be a powerful branding tool, Daniel Honigan writes on Old Media, New Tricks. Twitter lists can be part of building “reputational currency” on the Web, or as Honigan calls it: showing other people how well-rounded you are.

RSS feeds: I used to be one of those people who subscribed to blogs through e-mail, but that quickly became annoying. My inbox would fill with blogs I didn’t have time to read at that moment, so I would delete them. Then I discovered RSS. I have 67 blogs in my Google Reader right now, and I check the reader every few days or so. These are not the only blogs I read, mind you.  I’ve memorized the URL to the ones I’m really addicted to, so I don’t use a reader to get to them. But an RSS keeps everything there for me, so I can read it when I have time. To me, that’s one on the important factors in media today. Media should be tailored to fit the timen needs of  the reader of the message, not the sender of the message. Anyway, I know some say that RSS is passe, but I still find mine useful. Beat Blogging offers a thorough how-to for beginning RSS users with some examples of how journalists use RSS.

What not to cover:  Sometimes doing good journalism is about knowing what not to cover. That’s the point Jeremy Littau, a j-prof at Lehigh University, makes on his blog in a post about the Texas Tribune deciding not to cover the Fort Hood shooting. (I realize his post is from more than a month ago, but I think his point is timeless.)  The new journalism model, Littau writes, means: “You need to figure out what you are, then be who you are.” I agree. In a niche-dominated world, the old mass medium idea of serving everyone no longer makes sense. If you try to be something to everyone, you’ll end up being nothing to no one. A niche needs to be narrow, specific, and meaningful to a highly interested but perhaps small group of readers. The value is in reading multiple niches.

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I heard the news about Editor & Publisher closing as I hear many things these days – through Twitter. Patrick Thornton (jiconoclast) tweeted: “Does anything better symbolize the state of print media right now than the closure of E&P? Yes things are very bad.” At first, I hoped his tweet didn’t mean what I knew it meant. But a quick search of Twitter yielded proof. Yes, E&P had told its staff Thursday that it was shutting down its print and online operation.

This shook me even more than when Gourmet announced its closure a while back. (By the way,  I found about a Gourmet’s death on Twitter, too.)

I read E&P almost religiously in my early years as a journalist. The magazine had a bright purple cover back then. I’d pretty much devour it when it arrived in my mailbox. As time went on, I didn’t renew my subscription. I’m not sure why.

The thing is I enjoyed E&P’s articles. I appreciated the reporting. In fact, in the last few years, its Web site became one of regular online haunts to find out what’s going on in the news business. Sometimes, I’d head to the E&P Web page myself, but more often I’d be drawn there by a well-worded tweet or a blog post from someone whose opinion I valued.

Read the rest of this post at Nieman Journalism Lab.

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