The best thing about being a journalist

When it's all said and done and I look back on my career, they'll be a few big stories I remember and lots of people. It's the associations that will stand out most, and particularly the successes of people I've worked with.

One of those people is a  young man who landed a job this week at USA Today. He wrote me a note a few weeks ago saying he was applying for a post and wanted to talk with me about it. I immediately called a top editor at the paper and told him this guy is the real deal.

Well, he go the job--a terrific one. I told him that I will use him as an example of what can happen to  a skilled, smart, ambitious young person. I will also use him as an antidote with my editor friends who sometimes forget how much good they're doing. Most of them have similar stories about helping people find new job and climb the ladder, many times over.

All the news that fit to print and then some

A move by the New York Times to more aggressively link its online readers to other news sites is the kind of step that will make the Times even more valuable to its readers.

The move recognizes that Times editors and reporters do pick up information from other news outlets that leads to stories in their own publications and also that other organizations have information that will help their readers access angles and insights that Times itself isn't providing.

Newspapers have been generally loathe to "move" their readers to other sites, afraid of losing the clicks that come from keeping readers going deeper into their own sites. But I'd argue that providing what my former editor used to describe as "guide and direct" resources in fact makes the newspaper's print and web editions more valuable.

It makes newspapers more true "information centers," offering ways for the readers to be better informed, which is truly a public service.

 

 

   

Don't try this while texting

Several us sitting around a breakfast table for a Unity convention event got a chuckle this morning when one of the editors on hand talked about how her paper had enlisted readers to participate in a new real-time traffic feature for their website. The idea is to have readers text message the paper when they see an accident or a traffic jam. That prompted yours truly to say "I hope their car is stopped when their filing."

A few hours later waiting for my plane back to Kansas City, I opened the Wall Street Journal and to my surprise was a front page story about how people have gotten hurt while texting, bumping into lamp posts, falling off of curbs and in one case, walking into a bride while texting. 

Doctors are reporting that people are showing up in emergency rooms with injuries from accidents sustained while they were texting and obviously not watching where they were going. One driver/texter even killed someone.

So, if you're in a position to ask readers to help you with coverage, tell them to stand still or sit still while messaging. Or they may be the subject of your next story.

The booths are buzzing at Unity

The Unity convention in Chicago is the perfect place to recharge your batteries if you're a veteran journalist like me worried about the state of the news industry. It's hard to feel down when you're among the 5,000 mostly bright-faced attendees of the minority journalism conference which is running this week at the McCormick Place convention center.

Many in attendance are young and looking for their first or second jobs, which I take as a very positive sign. They filled the job fair Thursday afternoon and made the CNN and USA today booths buzz with activity. And even the one or two chairs in front of many of the metro newspaper recruiting booths were occupied with eager candidates.

I talked to one young woman who was graduated a year ago from Santa Clara University who has been freelancing as a writer for an NBC affiliate in San Francisco. She was a very poised, web-savvy print major who has learned to write broadcast copy. She would welcome a fulltime job in any good news organization, print, web and/or broadcast and from what I saw of her resume, which she shared with me, she'd be catch.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed she gets a job soon so "we" don't lose her. She's exactly what mainstream journalism organizations need in this multi platform era.

Good for you Katie, and good for us

Katie Couric isn't on my top 10 list of journalists I most admire but I was happy to see that she plans to continue anchoring the CBS evening news. I think she's gotten a bit of what Hillary Clinton got: more scrutiny (read nitpicking) than she deserved. 

But that's something Couric can't control. What she can control is her reaction to it and to a large degree the kind of journalism she wants to be known for. 

With her evening anchor role and with meaty contributions to "60 Minutes," Couric has a great chance to gain her bones and a bigger audience over time. If she hang in there for a few years, I have no doubt she''ll become a beloved and respected figure. 

 

Women still aren't given the opportunities men are given when it comes to top flight news positions. So when some like Couric is given such an opportunity, my hope is that she doesn't step down too soon unless she absolutely has to.

Negative? Turn your energy into a proposal

Someone smart I live with said to me some years ago something to the effect "Rather than be a contrarian, make a proposal." It's a good practice whether you're talking with your honey about which restaurant to choose or to a newspaper editor about what's wrong with his or her paper.

I had the opportunity today to meet with someone concerned about an aspect of preps sports coverage in a local newspaper. By the time we met, he had heard from the paper's editors, very courteously, that staffing and newshole constraints contributed to why the paper couldn't give the subject more coverage.

The editors have agreed to meet with him so he came to me for advice. Here's what I told him. "Pick two or three things that you and the people you're working can provide the paper each week. It may be a calendar highlighting the best five upcoming matches plus one game summary."

 The point is to figure out how to help expand the coverage without causing more work for the editor and his staff. The point is that making a proposal is a way to take a positive approach to problem-solving and starting the discussion in an affirmative direction. It's easier and more productive than digging out of a hole.

 

"Newspaper war" has whole new meaning

It would not be surprising to anyone who knows her that Bobbi Bowman, ASNE's diversity director, would liken the turbulent period the newspaper business is in to World War II. The great war is her great passion, a hobby that has taken her to the shores of Normandy as well as to many museums and historical sites around the country.  She calls it the war that "saved Democracy." 

So in a conference call with would-be panelists for the upcoming Unity minority journalists convention Bobbi tried to provide an inspirational moment by saying this period in newspaper history reminds her of 1943, the first year of the war.

 "There were lots of casualties and the allies were losing ground. Everyone was very afraid and it was tough," she told us. To which one of the callers replied, "That certainly makes me feel a lot better."