Nieman Journalism Lab |
- Not too much for news orgs in Apple’s new announcements
- How Human Rights Watch got into the quasi-journalism business
- Len Downie: The teaching hospital model works, but it will require drastic change
| Not too much for news orgs in Apple’s new announcements Posted: 12 Sep 2012 11:58 AM PDT
When Apple has one of its semiannual stage shows to show off new gear, we sometimes do a quick roundup of the implications for news organizations. But today’s announcement of the iPhone 5 (and assorted other tidbits) was pretty light on angles. So here’s just the quickest of journalism-centric overviews:
Photo by John Bradley/Wired used under a Creative Commons license. |
| How Human Rights Watch got into the quasi-journalism business Posted: 12 Sep 2012 09:32 AM PDT
Media from nonprofits has boomed in recent years. But that doesn’t just mean the ProPublicas and Texas Tribunes of the world — nonprofit advocacy groups are also inching their way into the media business. Instead of relying on news organizations to transmit their messages to an audience, some are focused on making that connection themselves. “We consciously ape the style of media in our communication in order that what we produce looks more like journalism,” said Carroll Bogert, deputy executive director for external relations at Human Rights Watch. Or, to put it another way, Bogert said, “We’re a nonprofit and we’re moving into the media business.” This cut-out-the-middle-man move is growing more common thanks to cheap(er) delivery platforms and an unstable professional media environment. (With our partners at Penn Annenberg’s Center for Global Communication Studies, we ran a series on the subject back in 2009.) Professional sports teams have their own journalists. And when groups like Invisible Children want to spread the message about the use of child soldiers in Uganda and the Congo, they create a YouTube video like KONY 2012. Though Bogert would argue Human Rights Watch doesn’t share Invisible Children’s methods, what they do have in common with many nonprofits is the desire to get their message directly in front of the right audience. Bogert was at the MIT Media Lab on Monday speaking about the how Human Rights Watch has realigned itself for a changing media. (A video is available here.) HRW’s standard news release has been replaced with something that looks more like an AP story, complete with lede and nut graf. Photos are shot and delivered from around the world, by photographers with journalism backgrounds like Brent Stirton and the late Tim Hetherington. HRW now produces video features that can work as pre-packaged segments or supplemental video for broadcast. The videos are available in whole or broken up into disaggregated clips. In other words, their message, whether it’s about the military’s use of schools in Yemen, or abuses to indigenous people in Chile, gets delivered in the most journalism-esque way possible. One of the ways they do this is by hiring former journalists — Bogert’s one, having spent more than a decade covering international stories for Newsweek. Mimicking the look and quality of journalism increases the chances of their message getting across, Bogert said. “It’s meant to look like a wire service story, so that when it arrives in the inbox of a wire service reporter, it moves seamlessly into the mainstream media,” she said. And it’s working. Bogert said HRW’s media mentions rose steadily in 2012, appearing in The New York Times almost daily. Stories from Human Rights Watch appear in Google News alongside other headlines. Broadcasters like the BBC and Britain’s Channel 4 have aired its video. They’ve also won a Peabody award for their multimedia. The changes taking place in journalism have allowed nonprofit advocacy groups to better position themselves to deliver their message. At the same time, the web and social media have provided an alternate channel to spread the word, Bogert said. “I think the question for us is what is the right balance between the short-form content that social media requires and the long-form content by which Human Rights Watch has made its name,” she said. But the same media vacuum that allows for Human Rights Watch also provides for something like KONY 2012. For a brief period in March, the video appeared to capture the attention of all media, social or traditional, until questions arose about the substance of claims made in the film. Bogert acknowledged the effect a film like KONY can have on raising awareness to a mass audience, but she said Human Rights Watch would stay away from sensationalist methods. One reason is that the nonprofit doesn’t really aim for a mass audience: Its targets are presidents, prime ministers, and others with the ability to make change happen. By taking a more journalistic approach, they’re more likely to find their way into the media diet of the powerful. “We want to make sure we’re occupying all the information channels flowing into the brain of a decision maker,” she said. As nonprofits like Human Rights Watch adopt the look and feel of journalism, Bogert said she has some concerns about the practice, even if it achieves the organization’s goals. Though HRW produces reports that look like news stories, she’s still hesitant to call it journalism. Still, the two have something in common, she said. “The act of making our information mobile and travel is the means by which it gets impact,” she said. |
| Len Downie: The teaching hospital model works, but it will require drastic change Posted: 12 Sep 2012 07:04 AM PDT
Editor’s Note: It’s the start of the school year, which means students are returning to journalism programs around the country. As the media industry continues to evolve, how well is new talent being trained, and how well are schools preparing them for the real world? We asked an array of people — hiring editors, recent graduates, professors, technologists, deans — to evaluate the job j-schools are doing and to offer ideas for how they might improve. Over the coming days, we’ll be sharing their thoughts with you. Here Len Downie, the former editor of The Washington Post and current Arizona State journalism professor, argues that the teaching hospital model should be brought to journalism schools. When the Nieman Journalism Lab asked for my thoughts at the beginning of another academic year, I realized how my career has been book-ended by meaningful experiences in journalism education. At the Ohio State University School of Journalism in the early 1960s, we learned primarily by producing, under the supervision of ambitious professional journalists on the school's faculty, a large-circulation daily newspaper that covered the campus and relevant news in the city and state around us. It made a summer internship on a metropolitan daily a familiar next step.
Now, after 44 years as an editor and reporter at The Washington Post, I'm starting my fourth year on the faculty of Arizona State University's innovative Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where it's my turn to help today's students do professional-level journalism. Cronkite is one of a growing — but still too small — number of journalism schools around the country producing vitally needed journalism for their communities, states, and the nation, while also teaching, researching, and experimenting with mass communications in the digital age. Students working in the Phoenix and Washington, D.C. bureaus of the Cronkite News Service cover government and public affairs for newspapers, television stations, and websites throughout Arizona. Students at Cronkite NewsWatch report and produce nightly half-hour local newscasts on the state's largest public television station. Cronkite students worked with others from 10 universities across the country on this year's Carnegie-Knight News21 national investigative reporting project on voting rights. Their stories and multimedia have been published by a number of newspapers and news websites, including The Washington Post, NBCNews.com, the Center for Public Integrity, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Arizona Republic, and nonprofit news site members of the Investigative News Network. The Cronkite School is not alone. The student-staffed Capital News Service of the University of Maryland's Merrill College of Journalism has provided news from College Park, Annapolis and Washington for that state's newspapers and television stations. Students at Northwestern's Medill News Service have produced journalism for local and national news media from bureaus in Chicago and Washington. Missouri's journalism school has produced a local newspaper for the city of Columbia, staffed by faculty and students, for more than a century. Temple, Columbia, CUNY, NYU, Illinois, Columbia College in Chicago, Michigan State, UC-Berkeley, USC, and Texas have experimented with city and neighborhood news sites staffed by their journalism students. American, Columbia, Boston University, Northeastern, Wisconsin, and Iowa have enabled students and faculty to do investigative work for a variety of news media partners. Advocates of university-produced journalism compare it to medical schools placing their students in teaching hospitals. Experienced (often prize-winning) journalists on the faculties of these journalism schools give their students rigorous, realistic experiences in professional journalism, multimedia innovation, and media entrepreneurship. The students can get a leg up on competition for jobs when they graduate. Future employers of the best students can use their help in coping with the changing news media environment. The schools' news media partners can share in journalism that downsized newsrooms can no longer produce on their own. Their audiences, including communities around universities, can benefit from more journalism that matters to them. However, at most journalism schools, moving to a teaching hospital model would require considerable, if not drastic change, as Eric Newton of the Knight Foundation, a financial supporter of such change, told a national conference of journalism educators earlier this year. "Put simply," he said to them, "this is a do-over moment for journalism education." In August, Knight and five other foundation funders of journalism education — McCormick, Scripps Howard, Brett Family, Wyncote, and Ethics and Excellence in Journalism — urged more journalism schools and university presidents to adopt the teaching hospital model for digital age journalism. "We believe journalism and communications schools must be willing to recreate themselves if they are to succeed in playing their vital roles as news creators and innovators," the letter said. "Some leading schools are doing this, but most are not." Importantly, the six funders warned that schools that do not change "will find it difficult to raise money from foundations interested in the future of news." After researching and writing for several years now about the future of news, I believe journalism schools have the opportunity and obligation to play important roles in the reconstruction of American journalism. But, to do so, their missions and curricula must change. They should produce journalism, invigorate essential standards and values, and incubate innovation. Faculty hiring and retention should be based at least as much on professional journalism talent, experience, and creativity as on academic degrees and publications. Research should be applicable to the survival and innovation of good journalism in a digital world. Students should be challenged to work on journalism for professional news media, in addition to student media. The Ohio State Lantern newspaper of my day served its student journalists and its community of readers well. But that was a half century ago. Journalism schools that have not really changed over the decades are not only jeopardizing their own futures. They are failing in their obligations to their students, their communities, and journalism itself. Photo illustration of Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication by Michael Ruiz used under a Creative Commons license. |
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