des moines

I’m excited! Andy Brudtkuhl asked me to guest post on The Future of Journalism (all caps add drama, right?) for his blog, “Get A New Browser.” It’s my first guest post at another blog and I’m worried I’ve gone on far too long:

Let’s get one thing straight: Journalism has a future. It just isn’t going to be flung at your doorstep in a plastic sack, or pop on the TV at 5 and 10 p.m.

I believe in the profession of journalism. Great storytelling is going to live on. As the Fourth Estate, our nation and world media outlets need to keep investigating.

It’s just that, as much as I love to curl up in bed with the Sunday paper and coffee, even though I have daily delivery, sitting with the physical paper is not how I typically get my news. Since I’m employed by a newspaper, I could feel bad about this. Or, I could be realistic about my media consumption and recognize that the habits of my generation are going to dictate the future of the industry. I can interact, and listen and suggest changes to how we present our content. Awhile back, I blogged about the future of journalism and used a comparison to the auto industry. Seems that was a post ahead of its time.

This week especially, there’s been a lot of doom and gloom about The Demise of Old Media and the Big Three. Coincidence? We’re talking about two industries where consumers are demanding products that require serious innovation and retooling of production. I don’t think media is going to get a bailout. Craigslist and the demise of classifieds is a problem. I’m not going to pretend I know much about funding the newspaper industry, or have a non-advertising based business model to save the day. But I do know our budgets are getting smaller and so are our staffs.

Our readers have the networks and tools to create these products on their own if they feel they’re not being properly served. We’re going to have to offer content across different platforms. We’re going to have to open up lines of communication. We’re already seeing this happen with mobile apps and citizens and journalists updating about #Mumbai on Twitter.

We need to combine forces with “citizen journalists” (AKA people who would be great potential sources but who are breaking the news before us.) We need to use the web to post drafts of stories, ask for feedback and answer the questions readers really want answered. (Also, readers are the critics, writing restaurant reviews on sites like Yelp and Metromix.) There are a lot of gems in citizen journalism, but a lot of noise, too. We need to link more to other work that will serve our readers and keep us from reinventing the wheel and to add context to stories. We need to examine the idea of gatekeeping and do an even better job of listening to the people on the other side of the gate — where convergence journalism is born. (With that idea in mind, I want to take a closer look at this study.)

The Register knows this. Or, we’ve got a clue what needs to happen. When you’re part of a big company, transition takes time. It’s frustrating. But there’s experimentation going on, and some great online projects have come out of the paper this year: Check out our award-winning coverage of the Parkersburg tornado, and collected coverage of the Postville Raids and aftermath. We’re hosting live chats on a regular basis, with people from sportswriters to chefs. We’re building pages to collect topical tweets. We have blogs and comments (both areas that, on our site, could use serious tweaking.)

As a sort of media tween, with a foot in both Old and New journalism, I see a future where the principals of the former are leveraged to create a more mobile, interactive, customizable and quickly updated version of “The news.” What will this look like? I’m not sure, but I think in my lifetime Fido won’t be able to fetch it.

Our reporters can’t be everywhere, all the time. But if we keep working on a relationship with the community, we can create meaningful content together.

That made me miss journalism school for just a second. (I hope tomorrow’s journalism students have access to web development classes along with journalism ethics lectures, unlike me.)

On a lighter note, the “30 must-have gifts for journalists” on 10,000 words is pretty funny. I bet the journalist in your life would probably be happy with a new pair of gym shoes and a gift card to Quiznos, though.

As always, I love feedback: brianne[at]dmjuice.com

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