hey guys! so although i no longer write/report and i no longer work at a newspaper, i'm still a news junkie and i love the nyt's lede blog. although i don't read it all too often (i'm mostly on gawker hehehe) i think it's pretty cool that the times is addressing media happenings on the main part of their website. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/
totally unrelated, for those who don't know, i'm working at hearst magazines right now doing a sort of design fellowship, which is awesome! and because i've only worked at newspapers and have heard about newspapers trying to find the youth and to make a better website and, having experienced it myself, putting ads on the fronts of sections (san diego union-trib's sports section YUCK) i didn't realize that magazines were also in trouble. we just had a meeting with the prez of hearst, and she was trying to build up all of what hearst does and everything and i guess the sales and marketing side of magazines are really struggling to get advertisers and make enough money without losing customers to tabloid-ish weekly magazines. it's kinda cool to get another perspective of the media business. hope everyone is doing well!
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
College papers deliver
Not sure if anyone saw this on Monday; it's pretty interesting. Happy Thanksgiving. Dalia
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bal-to.college20nov20,0,6299538.story?coll=bal-features-headlines
From the Baltimore Sun
College papers deliver: While the mainstream press struggles, corporations and advertisers latch onto profitable campuspublications
By Nick Madigan
Sun Reporter
November 20, 2006
Mainstream newspapers may be up against dwindling circulation and shrinking advertising revenues,but college papers have become hot commodities.
Spurred by research indicating that about 76 percent of the nation's 6 million full-time collegeundergraduates read their campus papers at least occasionally, big corporations and advertisers are latching onto student-run publications.
One of the most notable examples of the trend occurred in late summer, when a subsidiary of MTV,one of the country's best-known youth brands and part of the Viacom entertainment empire, purchased College Publisher, a company that runs Web sites for about 450 college papers - nine of them inMaryland.
So solid are the economic prospects for the student-run newspaper at Florida State University,FSView & Florida Flambeau, that it was acquired in August by a mainstream newspaper, TheTallahassee Democrat.
"There's no more local paper than a campus paper," said Dina Pradel, general manager of Y2M, whichfounded College Publisher in 1999. She said that while large urban newspapers are trying to wooyounger readers, college papers have a ready-made audience of adherents, willing to read news about their immediate environment, and to be tempted by ads targeted to their tastes.
The typical campus audience they cater to, she said, is "a very attractive demographic," a groupwhose members will spend $1 million or more in buying things and services over a lifetime. While in college, many students will be making major first-time purchasing decisions - cars, insurance,electronics - a market advertisers dearly covet.
The health of campus papers is due also, in part, to the explosive growth of the Internet and ofWeb-based advertising, much of it aimed at the young. About 600 campus papers publish onlineeditions, and advertisers have been quick to exploit their potential. Many campus newspaper Websites now carry ads from national retail chains and other big-ticket companies.
And students are checking in. A recent survey by Student Monitor, which tracks the buying habits,concerns and activities of students nationwide, showed that, while students watch an average of 10hours of television a week, they spend 15 hours a week online.
At the same time, college students are still reading the papers' print editions. A Student Monitorstudy says 76 percent of college students surveyed during the spring semester this year read oneout of the previous five print editions of their campus paper. That number has remained roughlyconsistent for almost two decades, never dropping below the high 60s, said Eric Weil, managingpartner of Student Monitor, which twice a year surveys 1,200 full-time students on 100 four-yearcampuses.
The difference now, he said, is that 38 percent of students regularly read an online edition oftheir campus paper, and they spend an average of 19 minutes doing so, Weil said.
"From a net readership standpoint, there's no question that the online versions have gained thepapers' readers," Weil said. "In fairness to the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times, a collegepaper is free, and it's about me. For the students at the University of Pennsylvania, The DailyPennsylvanian is a lot more relevant than The New York Times."
Mainstream newspapers like the Times are struggling to keep the readers they have. While manypapers, including The Sun, have seen an increase in Web readers, newspapers' print circulations ingeneral have dropped an average of about 3 percent in the last year. The decline has remainedfairly consistent in recent years as the print media industry continues to be hit by competitionfrom the Internet and other new forms of technology. In 1980, 62 million Americans read a dailypaper. Last year, that number was down to 55 million.
Readers of campus newspapers, meanwhile, inhabit somewhat insulated ecosystems, with their ownnews, personalities and events, so that picking up a free copy or browsing for its content onlineis, for many students, almost automatic.
"We have a captive audience," said Brian Stelter, in his third year as editor of The Towerlight, at Towson University.
Stelter, who has gained renown tracking the television industry on his TVNewser blog, recalledbeing frustrated as a freshman when he kept seeing "a lot of papers still left on the racks."
No more. The Towerlight prints the same number of papers it did then - 10,000 copies, twice a week- but now they tend to vanish."
That makes the circulation people happy," Stelter said. With Towson's student population of 18,000 expected to rise to about 25,000 in the next decade, the paper's role in campus life, he said, will rise, too."
We might not be in print everyday in 10 years, but we'll be online everyday," said Stelter, whooversees 13 paid staff members, as well as a number of freelance writers. This semester, the paperbegan running Web-based classified ads, a crucial money-earner.
Towson University provides The Towerlight with free office space and Internet access, but thenonprofit paper's $250,000 in annual expenses is supported solely by advertising, said generalmanager Mike Raymond. Ads have increased in number in the last few years, he said, and so have costs.
"We aren't really growing in leaps and bounds, but we've been able to hold our own," Raymond said,"whereas mainstream papers seem to be losing their audience, to a degree."
This summer's purchase of Y2M, the parent of College Publisher, by the MTV subsidiary mtvU was aclear signal that big-money interests were looking with favor on college newspapers and their Websites. In addition to providing online tech support to campus papers - as well as addingtechnologically complex features such as podcasts and video tools - College Publisher acts as anadvertising agency, placing national ads on the papers' Web sites in exchange for a share of therevenue.
The student-run papers at nine Maryland institutions - Towson University, the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Hood College, Morgan State University, Mount Saint Mary's College, Goucher College,Loyola College, the University of Maryland and the University of Baltimore - are supported by theCollege Publisher technology.
For the MTV subsidiary, the purchase of Y2M and its College Publisher unit was "an amazingopportunity to have a visceral connection with students," said Stephen Friedman, general manager of mtvU. "Advertisers are absolutely comfortable with the very well-lit space of a newspaper sitewhere kids are creating journalism. That's where we realized there's a huge opening here in beingable to contribute to that conversation, to students' ability to talk to each other in a brand that everyone is reading."
Friedman said his company is working with 150 national advertisers who are looking to connect withcollege students. "Advertisers understand that to get inside the college bubble, you need multipletouchpoints - on air, online, in the paper," he said.
Students "have a massive amount of buying power," said Jason Bakker, marketing director at CampusMedia Group, a Minnesota-based marketing company that helps ad agencies reach high-school andcollege students.
Given many students' relative inexperience with what Bakker calls first-time "buying dilemmas,"they are prime targets for advertisers. "It's a really great entry point for national advertisersto introduce them to a brand or service and hopefully build brand loyalty at an early stage,"Bakker said. "The audience is relatively pure, in the sense that a brand can be pretty much assured they're going to reach their target [demographic]."
At Florida State University, the audience of the twice-weekly FSView & Florida Flambeau wasevidently desirable enough for The Tallahassee Democrat, owned by the Gannett Co., the country'slargest newspaper chain. The student paper's editor, Brandon Mellor, said the paper's purchase bythe big local daily this summer "came as a shock," on the very day the deal was consummated, andthat there were fears on campus "that the Democrat would take over" the student body's singular voice.
"It isn't true and it won't be true," said Mellor, a 22-year-old senior who oversees 14 editors and about 25 writers, all students. "It's not that big a deal in the long run. The only thing is thatwe get paid a little differently, but there's no input as to what we run in the paper."
So why was he told the takeover by the Democrat had occurred?"They felt they weren't reaching the college audience," Mellor said. "They saw it as a way to reach that audience and make some money at the same time."
nick.madigan@baltsun.com
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bal-to.college20nov20,0,6299538.story?coll=bal-features-headlines
From the Baltimore Sun
College papers deliver: While the mainstream press struggles, corporations and advertisers latch onto profitable campuspublications
By Nick Madigan
Sun Reporter
November 20, 2006
Mainstream newspapers may be up against dwindling circulation and shrinking advertising revenues,but college papers have become hot commodities.
Spurred by research indicating that about 76 percent of the nation's 6 million full-time collegeundergraduates read their campus papers at least occasionally, big corporations and advertisers are latching onto student-run publications.
One of the most notable examples of the trend occurred in late summer, when a subsidiary of MTV,one of the country's best-known youth brands and part of the Viacom entertainment empire, purchased College Publisher, a company that runs Web sites for about 450 college papers - nine of them inMaryland.
So solid are the economic prospects for the student-run newspaper at Florida State University,FSView & Florida Flambeau, that it was acquired in August by a mainstream newspaper, TheTallahassee Democrat.
"There's no more local paper than a campus paper," said Dina Pradel, general manager of Y2M, whichfounded College Publisher in 1999. She said that while large urban newspapers are trying to wooyounger readers, college papers have a ready-made audience of adherents, willing to read news about their immediate environment, and to be tempted by ads targeted to their tastes.
The typical campus audience they cater to, she said, is "a very attractive demographic," a groupwhose members will spend $1 million or more in buying things and services over a lifetime. While in college, many students will be making major first-time purchasing decisions - cars, insurance,electronics - a market advertisers dearly covet.
The health of campus papers is due also, in part, to the explosive growth of the Internet and ofWeb-based advertising, much of it aimed at the young. About 600 campus papers publish onlineeditions, and advertisers have been quick to exploit their potential. Many campus newspaper Websites now carry ads from national retail chains and other big-ticket companies.
And students are checking in. A recent survey by Student Monitor, which tracks the buying habits,concerns and activities of students nationwide, showed that, while students watch an average of 10hours of television a week, they spend 15 hours a week online.
At the same time, college students are still reading the papers' print editions. A Student Monitorstudy says 76 percent of college students surveyed during the spring semester this year read oneout of the previous five print editions of their campus paper. That number has remained roughlyconsistent for almost two decades, never dropping below the high 60s, said Eric Weil, managingpartner of Student Monitor, which twice a year surveys 1,200 full-time students on 100 four-yearcampuses.
The difference now, he said, is that 38 percent of students regularly read an online edition oftheir campus paper, and they spend an average of 19 minutes doing so, Weil said.
"From a net readership standpoint, there's no question that the online versions have gained thepapers' readers," Weil said. "In fairness to the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times, a collegepaper is free, and it's about me. For the students at the University of Pennsylvania, The DailyPennsylvanian is a lot more relevant than The New York Times."
Mainstream newspapers like the Times are struggling to keep the readers they have. While manypapers, including The Sun, have seen an increase in Web readers, newspapers' print circulations ingeneral have dropped an average of about 3 percent in the last year. The decline has remainedfairly consistent in recent years as the print media industry continues to be hit by competitionfrom the Internet and other new forms of technology. In 1980, 62 million Americans read a dailypaper. Last year, that number was down to 55 million.
Readers of campus newspapers, meanwhile, inhabit somewhat insulated ecosystems, with their ownnews, personalities and events, so that picking up a free copy or browsing for its content onlineis, for many students, almost automatic.
"We have a captive audience," said Brian Stelter, in his third year as editor of The Towerlight, at Towson University.
Stelter, who has gained renown tracking the television industry on his TVNewser blog, recalledbeing frustrated as a freshman when he kept seeing "a lot of papers still left on the racks."
No more. The Towerlight prints the same number of papers it did then - 10,000 copies, twice a week- but now they tend to vanish."
That makes the circulation people happy," Stelter said. With Towson's student population of 18,000 expected to rise to about 25,000 in the next decade, the paper's role in campus life, he said, will rise, too."
We might not be in print everyday in 10 years, but we'll be online everyday," said Stelter, whooversees 13 paid staff members, as well as a number of freelance writers. This semester, the paperbegan running Web-based classified ads, a crucial money-earner.
Towson University provides The Towerlight with free office space and Internet access, but thenonprofit paper's $250,000 in annual expenses is supported solely by advertising, said generalmanager Mike Raymond. Ads have increased in number in the last few years, he said, and so have costs.
"We aren't really growing in leaps and bounds, but we've been able to hold our own," Raymond said,"whereas mainstream papers seem to be losing their audience, to a degree."
This summer's purchase of Y2M, the parent of College Publisher, by the MTV subsidiary mtvU was aclear signal that big-money interests were looking with favor on college newspapers and their Websites. In addition to providing online tech support to campus papers - as well as addingtechnologically complex features such as podcasts and video tools - College Publisher acts as anadvertising agency, placing national ads on the papers' Web sites in exchange for a share of therevenue.
The student-run papers at nine Maryland institutions - Towson University, the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Hood College, Morgan State University, Mount Saint Mary's College, Goucher College,Loyola College, the University of Maryland and the University of Baltimore - are supported by theCollege Publisher technology.
For the MTV subsidiary, the purchase of Y2M and its College Publisher unit was "an amazingopportunity to have a visceral connection with students," said Stephen Friedman, general manager of mtvU. "Advertisers are absolutely comfortable with the very well-lit space of a newspaper sitewhere kids are creating journalism. That's where we realized there's a huge opening here in beingable to contribute to that conversation, to students' ability to talk to each other in a brand that everyone is reading."
Friedman said his company is working with 150 national advertisers who are looking to connect withcollege students. "Advertisers understand that to get inside the college bubble, you need multipletouchpoints - on air, online, in the paper," he said.
Students "have a massive amount of buying power," said Jason Bakker, marketing director at CampusMedia Group, a Minnesota-based marketing company that helps ad agencies reach high-school andcollege students.
Given many students' relative inexperience with what Bakker calls first-time "buying dilemmas,"they are prime targets for advertisers. "It's a really great entry point for national advertisersto introduce them to a brand or service and hopefully build brand loyalty at an early stage,"Bakker said. "The audience is relatively pure, in the sense that a brand can be pretty much assured they're going to reach their target [demographic]."
At Florida State University, the audience of the twice-weekly FSView & Florida Flambeau wasevidently desirable enough for The Tallahassee Democrat, owned by the Gannett Co., the country'slargest newspaper chain. The student paper's editor, Brandon Mellor, said the paper's purchase bythe big local daily this summer "came as a shock," on the very day the deal was consummated, andthat there were fears on campus "that the Democrat would take over" the student body's singular voice.
"It isn't true and it won't be true," said Mellor, a 22-year-old senior who oversees 14 editors and about 25 writers, all students. "It's not that big a deal in the long run. The only thing is thatwe get paid a little differently, but there's no input as to what we run in the paper."
So why was he told the takeover by the Democrat had occurred?"They felt they weren't reaching the college audience," Mellor said. "They saw it as a way to reach that audience and make some money at the same time."
nick.madigan@baltsun.com
Friday, November 17, 2006
i dub this blog the new corner of light (at least for me)
hello, kiddies. long time no talk. sigh. that's kind of my fault. i'm a workaholic (though no longer on cops, surprise, surprise).
i might as well admit up front that i generally suck at blogging ... but for y'all, anything. my posts might be a bit stream of consciousness, though. and with that warning i'll let the rambling begin:
first, an evanston-florida connection (so that i can justify the orange balconies label): in the city of melbourne, which is in one of the seven counties covered by the orlando sentinel, there's a little piece of our college home ... mustard's last stand. for any of you who eat meat and haven't been to this hotdog heaven near the football stadium, go now. get every topping. relish the heartburn.
second, i want to pick your brains. what do y'all think of the implosion of knight-ridder and impending implosion of tribune? long time coming? beginning of the end of newspapers as we know them? just another bump in the road? speak, please. i mean, i've read all the romenesko, wsj, nyt articles and i'm just wondering if any of us have a different perspective (especially since we're all still relatively new to the professional journalistic workforce).
third, i want to direct any of you who don't already read the la times column one stories to start doing so now ... some are even podcast (i recommend the one about the boxing time keeper).
and i'll leave you with my favorite sentence, which was written by one of my favorite editors when he was still a reporter (it's a feature about a pre-school-age ballet class). i think of it every time i'm struggling to find just the right turn of phrase: they jumped with all the grace and precision of exploding popcorn.
i might as well admit up front that i generally suck at blogging ... but for y'all, anything. my posts might be a bit stream of consciousness, though. and with that warning i'll let the rambling begin:
first, an evanston-florida connection (so that i can justify the orange balconies label): in the city of melbourne, which is in one of the seven counties covered by the orlando sentinel, there's a little piece of our college home ... mustard's last stand. for any of you who eat meat and haven't been to this hotdog heaven near the football stadium, go now. get every topping. relish the heartburn.
second, i want to pick your brains. what do y'all think of the implosion of knight-ridder and impending implosion of tribune? long time coming? beginning of the end of newspapers as we know them? just another bump in the road? speak, please. i mean, i've read all the romenesko, wsj, nyt articles and i'm just wondering if any of us have a different perspective (especially since we're all still relatively new to the professional journalistic workforce).
third, i want to direct any of you who don't already read the la times column one stories to start doing so now ... some are even podcast (i recommend the one about the boxing time keeper).
and i'll leave you with my favorite sentence, which was written by one of my favorite editors when he was still a reporter (it's a feature about a pre-school-age ballet class). i think of it every time i'm struggling to find just the right turn of phrase: they jumped with all the grace and precision of exploding popcorn.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
news linking toy
What do you folks make of this?
It reminds me of a site I really like, Visual Thesaurus. It doesn't seem as immediately addictive, in part because the interface isn't quite as natural.
By the way, if you would like to post a link to your Web page or blog in the sidebar, please let me know. Or, since you all have admin status, you can do it. Eventually, I'd like to include a list of all the publications we write for or have some other kind of relationship with along the side.
It reminds me of a site I really like, Visual Thesaurus. It doesn't seem as immediately addictive, in part because the interface isn't quite as natural.
By the way, if you would like to post a link to your Web page or blog in the sidebar, please let me know. Or, since you all have admin status, you can do it. Eventually, I'd like to include a list of all the publications we write for or have some other kind of relationship with along the side.
what makes a good podcast?
I'm not sure if any of you are into podcasts. (Strike that, I'm sure Scott is.) But I think it's a great medium, for many reasons. However, as a genre, the podcast seems to still be in its infancy. Most of the ones I've subscribed to via iTunes have decent production -- but that's often only because they're culled from radio and TV. I feel like the podcast may still be in the stage newspaper Web sites were in when they tried to post the entire paper online as a PDF. So what makes for a good podcast? And how can we make podcasts better?
admin
Hi folks:
Just so you know, I've made everyone who's registered for the site an administrator. This means you can invite guests... so please do.
Also, let me know if you'd like to receive updates to the blog as e-mails.
Just so you know, I've made everyone who's registered for the site an administrator. This means you can invite guests... so please do.
Also, let me know if you'd like to receive updates to the blog as e-mails.
Monday, November 13, 2006
You can take the man out of Medill, but...
Howdy, everybody. I think, in this crowd, none of us need any introduction; but I thought I should say hello first. Long time, no see. A little bit of an update: I live in Orlando now, and I am a news designer for the Sentinel. And if any of you want to come to the Happiest City on Earth, mi sofa es su casa.
Now, to brass tacks.
For my first post, I wanted to share with you all a great, and Evanston-related, story that has been making its rounds here in Orlando. Anybody remember the temple across the street from Harris? That'd be Sigma Alpha Epsilon's national headquarters. But lately, they've had to focus their attention on their University of Central Florida chapter, here in Orlando:
It seems that the Sentinel story actually left out some of the most horrifying parts. From the UCF Central Florida Future story:
I've been fielding questions from the copy desk about a variety of Evanston- and Northwestern-related conventions, for the last couple of weeks, every time they need to write about this. So it was the first thing I thought of when I decided to make my first post. As Scott might say: Hey presto!
P.S.: I would like to propose that we name the "meta-media" category "Seriously I Mean" in honor of a certain classmate with roman numerals. (Unfortunately, using commas will throw the whole system off, I suspect.) And the job category "La Cosa Nostra." Just my two bits.
Now, to brass tacks.
For my first post, I wanted to share with you all a great, and Evanston-related, story that has been making its rounds here in Orlando. Anybody remember the temple across the street from Harris? That'd be Sigma Alpha Epsilon's national headquarters. But lately, they've had to focus their attention on their University of Central Florida chapter, here in Orlando:
Police called to a University of Central Florida fraternity house last week found young men crawling on hands and knees, screaming profanely and wearing women's underwear, fairy wings and a diaper.
University police released this account of the incident Thursday, the same day the national headquarters of Sigma Alpha Epsilon suspended the UCF chapter pending its own investigation of how three men at the house ended up being taken to a hospital.
[...]
UCF police responded early Oct. 26 to the on-campus fraternity house, which sports a large gold lion statue out front and purple doors. Officers heard weeping, moaning and "aggressive screaming," according to their report.
At first, investigators were told they could not go inside because a "ritual" was being performed, police said. When officers entered, they saw seven or eight crawling men wearing bras and women's underpants and one man sobbing on the floor and wearing a rainbow-colored wig and a diaper.
One man wearing a pink tank top, women's underwear and a blond wig lay on the floor vomiting while another participant held his head up, the report states.
It seems that the Sentinel story actually left out some of the most horrifying parts. From the UCF Central Florida Future story:
Police contacted Orange County Rescue when some of the men were deemed in need of medical attention, citing that one man "appeared to have trouble breathing." Another man received assistance in order to "keep him from lying in his own vomit," and one "could not walk under his own power."
Orange County Rescue transported three men, whose names have not been disclosed, to Florida Hospital East. They were released the same night.
Police found "numerous" beer cans and bottles, one mostly consumed bottle of rum and "numerous mangled hotdogs" scattered on the floor of the SAE house.
I've been fielding questions from the copy desk about a variety of Evanston- and Northwestern-related conventions, for the last couple of weeks, every time they need to write about this. So it was the first thing I thought of when I decided to make my first post. As Scott might say: Hey presto!
P.S.: I would like to propose that we name the "meta-media" category "Seriously I Mean" in honor of a certain classmate with roman numerals. (Unfortunately, using commas will throw the whole system off, I suspect.) And the job category "La Cosa Nostra." Just my two bits.
big news in Mumbai
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061113/ap_en_ot/people_angelina_jolie
And later this afternoon, watch as Jolie drinks a cup of coffee... that she made herself.
And later this afternoon, watch as Jolie drinks a cup of coffee... that she made herself.
The New Medill Dean, Indeed
There is one primary reason I decided to sign on when I got Andy's invitation. That is, of course, the Dean John Lavine/Medill 2020 cataclysm that has taken place over the past year. The school's abrupt change of course and its uncertain direction, enunciated in only the most ambiguous prose, has left hundreds of students, alumni, and other journalists scratching their heads.
I hope we can bring a discussion of these issues to the public with this site. I propose an "On Medill" category for the blog, in which "NU Media People" will turn a critical eye on the institution from which most of us hold degrees. I was asked by a reporter soon after the announcement that Lavine would become dean whether there was "cause for concern." After some thought, I said, "I don't know if there is cause for concern, but I know that people are concerned." In that spirit, let's gather some information, maybe even do some good old-fashioned reporting, and get to the bottom of this change.
First, a disclosure: I was serving on Medill's Curriculum Committee as an undergraduate student representative when Lavine took the helm. That committee stopped meeting for the rest of the academic year, and I don't know whether it has been reinstated. I then served as a member of Lavine's "Advisory Council" before he released his vision publicly. Because of the nature of those groups, I will generally withhold information I gained there. I learned nothing in that environment that shouldn't be accessible without that access, and I would like to maintain a bit of distance from my own advisory service.
I'll start by posting a few of the stories out there on the issue. Happy reading:
I hope we can bring a discussion of these issues to the public with this site. I propose an "On Medill" category for the blog, in which "NU Media People" will turn a critical eye on the institution from which most of us hold degrees. I was asked by a reporter soon after the announcement that Lavine would become dean whether there was "cause for concern." After some thought, I said, "I don't know if there is cause for concern, but I know that people are concerned." In that spirit, let's gather some information, maybe even do some good old-fashioned reporting, and get to the bottom of this change.
First, a disclosure: I was serving on Medill's Curriculum Committee as an undergraduate student representative when Lavine took the helm. That committee stopped meeting for the rest of the academic year, and I don't know whether it has been reinstated. I then served as a member of Lavine's "Advisory Council" before he released his vision publicly. Because of the nature of those groups, I will generally withhold information I gained there. I learned nothing in that environment that shouldn't be accessible without that access, and I would like to maintain a bit of distance from my own advisory service.
I'll start by posting a few of the stories out there on the issue. Happy reading:
- The Vision for Medill 2020 – This document outlines Lavine's vision, which emerged some weeks after he took over as dean. It is a written document, not an interview, and many have told me the charts the dean uses here appear regularly in his presentations to outside groups.
- CJR's story, "The Magician" – Less fawning than the title might suggest, this story gives a good deal of background that we might not otherwise encounter. A highly recommended read for those who haven't seen it.
- The Mystery Of Medill's Missing Macs – A Daily story on Lavine's decision to switch to Windows computers. The story got Romeneskoed. A friend mentions that this change makes design Prof. Susan Mango Curtis' job incredibly trying, as layout and design happen on Apple operating systems almost 100 percent of the time.
- "The Medill School of Media Management?" from the Chicago Reader – From December 2005, this story contains comments from a Medill alumni listserv (who knew?) and an anonymous faculty member.
- Inside Higher Ed's December story – On balance a positive story, this includes comment from Lee Ettleman, who served on the advisory council with me.
Categories
This site is designed to serve a number of functions. I'd like each post to fit one of the functions and carry an appropriate label. Because the site is based in a common culture of friends and acquaintances, I figured it would be fun to give each category a humorous named that's based on a reference many of us would get. The only one I'll insist on is a tribue to Dalia; "Orange Balconies" could be changed. What are your ideas for the rest?
How Prestigious
Career moves, journalistic coups, anything else you'd like to brag about.
Orange Balconies
Anything goofy and Evanston-related; later discovery or insight about a story you worked on while at NU.
One Exclamation Point, Ever!
Style, grammar, writing issues, etc.
Category name
Job information, freelance opportunities, any information that you would rather go to a friend than a stranger.
Category name
All things meta-media, articles on controversies and debates, Poynter and ombud-type stuff.
Category name
Articles of interest, good or bad (not meta-media).
Category name
Anything purely social, get-togethers or announcing you'll be in a certain part of the country, that sort of thing.
Category name
Observations about the working life, whether you're in journalism/media anymore or not.
Category name
Any comments related to the site itself
How Prestigious
Career moves, journalistic coups, anything else you'd like to brag about.
Orange Balconies
Anything goofy and Evanston-related; later discovery or insight about a story you worked on while at NU.
One Exclamation Point, Ever!
Style, grammar, writing issues, etc.
Category name
Job information, freelance opportunities, any information that you would rather go to a friend than a stranger.
Category name
All things meta-media, articles on controversies and debates, Poynter and ombud-type stuff.
Category name
Articles of interest, good or bad (not meta-media).
Category name
Anything purely social, get-togethers or announcing you'll be in a certain part of the country, that sort of thing.
Category name
Observations about the working life, whether you're in journalism/media anymore or not.
Category name
Any comments related to the site itself
Welcome to NU Media People
Dear friends and colleagues:
Some of you I talk to every day. Some of you I haven’t seen in more than year. But I think you’ll all like this idea and will want to participate.
The idea: an informal networking site for NU students and alums interested in the media. What does that mean? It means a place to share job information, interesting articles, observations about the working world, or reflections on how the current media world connects with your NU experience.
Why? I have a few reasons myself. The first is that if there’s one thing I’ve discovered in my five months in the “real world,” it’s that one must network or die. Just about any job worth getting or opportunity worth pursuing is discovered through a friend or colleague of some sort — or can be exploited much more efficiently is one has that sort of connection. I hate the slick, superficial, elevator friendships that usually accomplish this sort of goal, so I thought this might be a good way to accomplish the same goals while also staying in touch with a bunch of people I like.
It may seem odd that I am starting such a site when I no longer work in any sort of obvious media job. There are two answers to that. First, my job is about to expand to include a bit of something like journalism, which I’ll explain in a later post. But the more fundamental answer is that there are many of us who were either journalism students or media people of some sort who, for whatever reason, aren’t anymore. Yet if you’re like me, you still get a kick out of awful headlines or unapologetic bias or ombud columns. You want to be a part of the discussion. And who knows, if you find the right opportunity, you might want to get back in. So even if you’re not a writer or reporter or editor or designer anymore, please join anyway.
If you are one of those things, as many of my friends still are, you must have also observed what I have, even as an outsider: reporting is a lonely profession. Erin Ailworth and I once had a conversation about how most journalists seem to be secretly antisocial. Even if you didn’t come into the reporting life that way, it might make you so; you have to move to a town where you don’t know a soul just to get a job; your profession is one of the least trusted in the United States; you witness awful things each day and are expected to maintain a straight face; even when you produce a decent bit of copy, it’s likely to get hacked up or poorly packaged; and though you might have lots of friends to drink and go out with, if they’ve never had a byline, they probably don’t understand. Fundamentally, this site is a small way to fight that sort of despair, which has infected too many of us and our friends.
So I hope you give the site a try. If it fails, well, it was worth a shot.
A few rules and guidelines:
* This site is not designed to be any sort of in-club or private network. At the same time, it is not the Medill career office. Attempting to join just to find a job or the like will be frowned upon; new members should have some previous connection to a member of the group.
* All the information posted will be public. Don’t be an idiot and post about how much you hate your editor and all your co-workers. If I’m worried that a post will get us in legal trouble, I’ll take it down.
* Membership and posting privileges will be extended to anyone a current member vouches for (as long as they spent some time at NU). If this gets out of hand, we’ll develop something better.
* Being a firm believer in the First Amendment, I don’t want to discourage anyone from speaking their minds. However, I’d ask everyone to keep in mind the purpose of the site.
* That being said, it seems prudent to add that current NU students probably shouldn’t post about current issues at Medill, the Daily, etc., unless the other members can be engaged in some way. So “new dean of Medill,” yes; “don’t forget the bagels for this week’s city desk meeting,” no.
* Finally, don’t be a jerk. Malicious gossip or flamewars could ruin the site for everyone.
* Feel free to suggest other sensible rules.
I hope everyone enjoys the site. Just let me know if you think there's anything I should change.
By the way, the list of people I invited to the site this morning was not intended to be exclusive at all... please invite anyone you'd like.
Some of you I talk to every day. Some of you I haven’t seen in more than year. But I think you’ll all like this idea and will want to participate.
The idea: an informal networking site for NU students and alums interested in the media. What does that mean? It means a place to share job information, interesting articles, observations about the working world, or reflections on how the current media world connects with your NU experience.
Why? I have a few reasons myself. The first is that if there’s one thing I’ve discovered in my five months in the “real world,” it’s that one must network or die. Just about any job worth getting or opportunity worth pursuing is discovered through a friend or colleague of some sort — or can be exploited much more efficiently is one has that sort of connection. I hate the slick, superficial, elevator friendships that usually accomplish this sort of goal, so I thought this might be a good way to accomplish the same goals while also staying in touch with a bunch of people I like.
It may seem odd that I am starting such a site when I no longer work in any sort of obvious media job. There are two answers to that. First, my job is about to expand to include a bit of something like journalism, which I’ll explain in a later post. But the more fundamental answer is that there are many of us who were either journalism students or media people of some sort who, for whatever reason, aren’t anymore. Yet if you’re like me, you still get a kick out of awful headlines or unapologetic bias or ombud columns. You want to be a part of the discussion. And who knows, if you find the right opportunity, you might want to get back in. So even if you’re not a writer or reporter or editor or designer anymore, please join anyway.
If you are one of those things, as many of my friends still are, you must have also observed what I have, even as an outsider: reporting is a lonely profession. Erin Ailworth and I once had a conversation about how most journalists seem to be secretly antisocial. Even if you didn’t come into the reporting life that way, it might make you so; you have to move to a town where you don’t know a soul just to get a job; your profession is one of the least trusted in the United States; you witness awful things each day and are expected to maintain a straight face; even when you produce a decent bit of copy, it’s likely to get hacked up or poorly packaged; and though you might have lots of friends to drink and go out with, if they’ve never had a byline, they probably don’t understand. Fundamentally, this site is a small way to fight that sort of despair, which has infected too many of us and our friends.
So I hope you give the site a try. If it fails, well, it was worth a shot.
A few rules and guidelines:
* This site is not designed to be any sort of in-club or private network. At the same time, it is not the Medill career office. Attempting to join just to find a job or the like will be frowned upon; new members should have some previous connection to a member of the group.
* All the information posted will be public. Don’t be an idiot and post about how much you hate your editor and all your co-workers. If I’m worried that a post will get us in legal trouble, I’ll take it down.
* Membership and posting privileges will be extended to anyone a current member vouches for (as long as they spent some time at NU). If this gets out of hand, we’ll develop something better.
* Being a firm believer in the First Amendment, I don’t want to discourage anyone from speaking their minds. However, I’d ask everyone to keep in mind the purpose of the site.
* That being said, it seems prudent to add that current NU students probably shouldn’t post about current issues at Medill, the Daily, etc., unless the other members can be engaged in some way. So “new dean of Medill,” yes; “don’t forget the bagels for this week’s city desk meeting,” no.
* Finally, don’t be a jerk. Malicious gossip or flamewars could ruin the site for everyone.
* Feel free to suggest other sensible rules.
I hope everyone enjoys the site. Just let me know if you think there's anything I should change.
By the way, the list of people I invited to the site this morning was not intended to be exclusive at all... please invite anyone you'd like.
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