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Web vs. print journalists: Can't we all coexist?
This may just be due to my relative short amount of time spent in the Web journalism game, but I can't seem to grasp why there's such animosity between some Web and print journalists. Case in point: Patrick Thornton's recent blog post, "Blah, blah, blah. Worst column ever.," a response to a column by Debra J. Saunders at the San Francisco Chronicle.
Saunders' column went along the "save newspapers, save democracy" vein, while Thornton's was more or less a call for people like Saunders to be fired. "You want to know why the Chronicle is losing boatloads of money?" he writes. "Because they waste money on columns like this!"
Personally, I think Saunders' column was a little naive and Thornton's blog post was overly harsh. (That's not to say that either piece didn't make good points.)
Both pieces illustrate what I find myself exceedingly frustrated with: Old school print journalists who feel like they're having their turf taken over by young punks and 21st Century Web journalists who think the world would be better off if we fired every newspaper employee older than 30.
For the record, I'm one of the young punks/Web journalists, though I don't support the idea that we ought to hack off anyone who doesn't have a MySpace page. Quite the opposite: I'm in a position with Sound Publishing where I'm helping to overhaul the company's newspaper Web sites to get in line with current and future media trends. As I've become more comfortable with my job, I've taken it upon myself to help some of our older and/or less Web savvy employees by teaching them the basics of being a Web journalist — little things like adding hyperlinks with HTML or embedding YouTube videos.
I've only been doing my job for about two months and I've only started offering my bits of wisdom in the last month or so. The response thus far has been encouraging, though. Our SEO has improved; overall Web hits are up; we're posting more and more breaking news. These are baby steps, sure, but they represent forward progress.
I'm not saying that all this is thanks to me. Our employees are going out and learning the 'Net themselves, too. That's the point, though: People who are unfamiliar and — yes — in some cases uncomfortable with the Web are embracing it and using it to make our product better.
So to the Debra J. Saunderses of the world: I don't know whether or not newspapers are dying, but the Web is where your readers are, so it's probably best to try and make it work.
And to the Patrick Thorntons of the world: Some of the older crowd may be slow to pick up the Web, but a lot of them are damn good journalists and are worth the time to be schooled in new ways of reporting.
Saunders' column went along the "save newspapers, save democracy" vein, while Thornton's was more or less a call for people like Saunders to be fired. "You want to know why the Chronicle is losing boatloads of money?" he writes. "Because they waste money on columns like this!"
Personally, I think Saunders' column was a little naive and Thornton's blog post was overly harsh. (That's not to say that either piece didn't make good points.)
Both pieces illustrate what I find myself exceedingly frustrated with: Old school print journalists who feel like they're having their turf taken over by young punks and 21st Century Web journalists who think the world would be better off if we fired every newspaper employee older than 30.
For the record, I'm one of the young punks/Web journalists, though I don't support the idea that we ought to hack off anyone who doesn't have a MySpace page. Quite the opposite: I'm in a position with Sound Publishing where I'm helping to overhaul the company's newspaper Web sites to get in line with current and future media trends. As I've become more comfortable with my job, I've taken it upon myself to help some of our older and/or less Web savvy employees by teaching them the basics of being a Web journalist — little things like adding hyperlinks with HTML or embedding YouTube videos.
I've only been doing my job for about two months and I've only started offering my bits of wisdom in the last month or so. The response thus far has been encouraging, though. Our SEO has improved; overall Web hits are up; we're posting more and more breaking news. These are baby steps, sure, but they represent forward progress.
I'm not saying that all this is thanks to me. Our employees are going out and learning the 'Net themselves, too. That's the point, though: People who are unfamiliar and — yes — in some cases uncomfortable with the Web are embracing it and using it to make our product better.
So to the Debra J. Saunderses of the world: I don't know whether or not newspapers are dying, but the Web is where your readers are, so it's probably best to try and make it work.
And to the Patrick Thorntons of the world: Some of the older crowd may be slow to pick up the Web, but a lot of them are damn good journalists and are worth the time to be schooled in new ways of reporting.
Tags: journalism, web vs. print
Add a Comment
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Comment by Dave Brooks on August 27, 2008 at 3:54pm - whoops ... well, at least I didn't type "anachronism"
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Comment by Paul Balcerak on August 27, 2008 at 3:24pm - Point well taken, though I think you meant "anagram," not "acronym."
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Comment by Dave Brooks on August 27, 2008 at 11:30am
- "Paul Balcerak"? Are we supposed to believe that's your *real* name? Obviously it's an online pseudonym! (After all, it *is* an acronym for "a capable lurk")
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Comment by Paul Balcerak on August 27, 2008 at 11:25am
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It doesn't help that most people post under stupid screen names like arcade_fire452 (or whatever). Even constructive comments are cheapened in a way when people aren't willing to attach their real names to them.
That doesn't cheapen the original product, though, or the impact it can have on people. I guess the trick is getting Web-shy reporters to realize that.
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Comment by Stephanie Romanski on August 27, 2008 at 10:04am - That's a good point. I mentioned in my other post that at least one of our Sports guys (and I wouldn't be surprised if he's passed on this prejudice to the other two) views people online as "basement-dwelling" nerds whose opinion isn't worth their time. I wonder if there isn't a bit of that feeling in most newsrooms. You're totally right in that a face-to-face comment has a bigger impact.
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Comment by Dave Brooks on August 27, 2008 at 9:37am
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Here's one reason established reporters don't take online too seriously: For years people have come up to them and said "I saw your story in the paper and (you got it all wrong / you hit the nail on the head)" but hardly anybody ever comes up to them and says "I saw your story/post/blog on the Web and ..."
This is slowly changing, but the face-to-face reaction a reporter gets from print work *FAR* outweighs the reaction they get from online work (a few reader comments below an article just don't have the same oomph). So you can hardly blame them if they think the latter isn't worth much effort.
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Comment by Joe Ruiz on August 23, 2008 at 2:45am -
Stephanie, I've found that getting people to think of online in addition to their normal gig is viral. If you can get one person who feels like they want to give it a try and they start learning more about the tools, it will spread. Slowly, but surely, it will spread.
As far as the "why use community" person... after you lob something at them, show them this video from Jay Rosen. http://is.gd/1O2Z
If your reporter knows it all already, then by all means, let them run their beat as they wish. Then again, if they knew it all, they would know that they know nothing. Engaging their audience is a way to keep the readers coming back. If they feel like they contribute in the search for the truth, they'll help.
I would also suggest that you don't force anything on your co-workers, you'll just shy them away even more. Maybe you want to create a private Ning or internal work group where you can collect information for them and allow them to browse at their convenience. Also, show them how they can also use it for personal/fun stuff, too.
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Comment by Stephanie Romanski on August 22, 2008 at 11:50am
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What Laura said is the issue I'm facing in my newsroom as well. I'm the web kid (well, I'm 37, but apparently, am considered a whippersnapper since I work in Online. I don't get it either.) who's always trying to make the newsroom learn new tricks. But my newsroom just lost a reporter and it's uncertain if she will be replaced, and the summer intern has gone back to J-school. We're down to 5 reporters and 3 sports guys, and we have to cover Central Nebraska. (We're a small but lovely newspaper :)
So asking them to try to use Twitter is like pulling teeth. I have one reporter, younger than I am, who's got the "I went to J-school for four years and earned my spot here legitimately, so why would we use stuff contributed by the community?'" attitude. I have two older guys - mid-to-late 50s, one is willing to try new things, the other you have to make him do it. I have a real whippersnapper who appears uninterested in anything online, but will do it if you tell him he has to, and a lovely woman who's journalistic skills are phenomenal, but is a complete Luddite. And my sports guys think anyone who spends time on the web is a basement dwelling bottom-feeder.
I like each and every one of these people, and they like me, but on the whole, their attitude about Online is begrudging, and they drag their feet, and I feel it's because of what Laura says - they aren't getting paid any more money, but they sure are being asked to do a lot more. So when set up Twitter accounts for each of them, only one of the photogs and our videographer was willing to try it out. The rest are pretending it will go away.
I don't know how to combat this. I get frustrated with them, and I'm sure they get frustrated with me. I hate nagging them. I don't want a divide in our departments. I just think that our goal is to deliver our excellent content to our readers in all the ways they want it - and more and more of our readers want it in more than just print.
Rambling now, but, I can't think of a fix for this problem. I'd love for us to all get along. But the frustration levels on both sides sometimes seem insurmountable.
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Comment by Paul Balcerak on August 21, 2008 at 5:11pm
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To be fair, a guy watching TV can offer damn good analysis — just playing devil's advocate here, though.
I'm on board with everyone here who mentioned the "split newsroom" dichotomy. I'm in kind of the same boat and part of what I'm trying to avoid is the perception that I'm in my little Web-based ivory tower while everyone else (re: editors and reporters) is down in the trenches.
A big part of avoiding that is showing reporters and editors that Web people really aren't all that special — they just happen to have a few bits of knowledge that other people don't. It's kind of like the difference between a journalist and an everyday citizen; journalists just happen to have more experience (or maybe a B.A. or M.A.) in storytelling.
I find that when "training" someone to use the Web, the trick isn't to get them using a bunch of complex tools right away, but make them feel like they know a few things. Start with one simple tool — a blog, for example — and then add little things onto that that apply everywhere ("You know what might drive up hits on your blog? Adding some hyperlinks in with each post and maybe embedding some YouTube videos").
Again, this is small stuff, but it's kind of like teaching your dad how to play video games. If you fire up the X-Box 360 and try to teach him to play Halo 3, he's going to get his ass kicked and be really discouraged. So hand him an SNES controller and stick in Yoshi's Island. It'll take a long time before he's coordinating team attacks over X-Box Live, but who cares? In the meantime he's playing a video game and that's the idea.
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Comment by Jason Molinet on August 20, 2008 at 7:54pm
- Again, not suggest every newsroom is this dysfunctional -- but at my old paper, print and online did not play well together. One example among many: we never replaced our college football writer once he left for greener pastures. Instead, a staffer covered six or so of the biggest national games of the year, bowl season included. In the mean time, one of the dot com guys started blogging college football. When the newspaper reporter who actually went on the road to cover games asked to contribute to the blog, it became a major issue. Imagine that? The reporter on the ground in the midst of events being rebuffed in favor of a guy watching on TV?
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