Winter newsletter, Jan. 16 meeting

NINA's Winter 2008-09 newsletter is available now online in PDF format. The snail-mail version should show up in your newsroom the first week of January.

One key item: The board meeting on Friday, Jan. 16, is also a general membership meeting for two purposes: to approve NINA's new mission statement (our bylaws require this step), and to set the course for our 2009 workshops and conferences. Any staffer from a NINA-member organization, and any individual member, is welcome to attend. The board meeting starts at 9 a.m. and the general membership meeting is at 10. Location is the Northern Star office in the Campus Life Building, NIU-DeKalb.

Identifying trouble spots for new reporters

A column from Jason Akst of the NIU journalism program:

Forget for a moment the mundane grammatical, stylistic and organizational problems that plague beginning journalists. They are important considerations, but in today’s rant I want focus on conceptual journalistic issues our students battle.

Why? So that, just in case we’re only partially successful at fixing everything below, you know where our training left off when you graciously and wisely hire our talented, bright young journalists.

Let’s talk about Me

"The story is not about you!" Ad nauseum, I emphasize that beginning news writers are not columnists. I include the part about how there’s no complete objectivity, but when we construct news stories, as much as possible, we’re supposed to be accurate, impartial, dispassionate, careful observers and transmitters of what happened.

Deaf ears. Perhaps because of Facebook, texting, blogging, K-12 emphasis on personal expression, all of the above, novice journalists find it increasingly difficult to keep themselves out of the story. The signals aren’t subtle. They write, "I think that …."

Numbers, schmumbers

No matter the topic, I emote, good stories are a smooth, potent blend of humanity and data. "Humanity" comes from good quotes, descriptions, narrative, etc.; "data" comes from information upon which those good quotes, descriptions, narrative, etc. rely. News revolves around reports, deaths/injuries, statistics, research … something that measures something.

They get the concept of compelling storytelling, and that’s important, but we’re supposed to tell nonfiction stories, and the nonfiction part comes from the numbers. They don’t like that, often don’t understand the information upon which stories are based, and struggle with incorporating information into the story.

According to this Web site …

We have created the monster that’s eating us. Even though students know that just about anybody can construct a Web site and make it seem real, they just can’t break away from using the Internet as primary – and only – source material.

I can’t tell you how many stories I read that say something like, "According to blahblahblah.com …." No mention talking with anyone at the Web site, no effort to talk to actual people. Just the idea that information on the Web is good enough is very troubling.

Report, yes; cheerlead, no

I blast editorialization because I think bloviating journalists (in places other than the Op/Ed section) give our profession the black eye we all-too-often deserve. Later we can debate a responsible level of advocacy, but in a basic news writing class, I focus on the layup, not the alley oop.

Interesting, however, is that when my students editorialize, overwhelmingly, they cheerlead rather than criticize. Over the past decade or so, the harshest media analysis seems to point mainstream media’s disinterest/inability to dissect and critique policy and policymakers in both public and private sectors. If anything, we should train our students to be more critical and less supportive.

News, yes. Paper? Maybe

The American Society of Newspaper Editors is considering removing "paper" from that name. Which is similar to the conversation we've been having within NINA.

"It is time for ASNE to recognize in its name and its membership that we are way beyond print-only newspapers," president Charlotte Hall said. "All journalists are now digital news producers, and while print remains an important delivery mode, more and more news is being produced only for the Web."

We have an opportunity

A collective gasp emanated from newsrooms today when the Detroit News and Free Press announced they no longer will provide home delivery on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Are we, as one colleague in college media put it, witnessing the death of a major newspaper? Or is this just an accelerated shift toward what all newspapers will look like in the near future?

Those of us who work in newspapers can’t imagine not having one at our breakfast tables, or at our desks when we arrive to work in the morning. But ask a roomful of college students – even journalism majors – how many of their families have a daily newspaper delivered to their homes. I’ve done this for several years, and the percentage is quickly diminishing. It’s about 33 percent in a good class, and more like 20 to 25 percent in most.

Ironically, today’s news, and last week’s bankruptcy filing by the Chicago Tribune, come at a time when the importance of watchdog reporting could not be clearer to the nation. Without pressure via diligent reporting from the Tribune and Sun-Times, would this kind of heat have reached the governor? Illinois is an international joke right now, but we’ve finally taken a step in the right direction.

Newspapers always have done a bad job of, as they say in the PR business, telling their story. We don’t spend a lot of effort promoting our importance to democracy … or the fact that we do most of the heavy lifting for our broadcast-news brethren, who then take our stories, add some superficial reporting and present them as their own.

We have an opportunity in Illinois, where this month even the least news-conscious citizens are realizing the danger of unchecked government. Newspapers have never been more important in this state. We can help illuminate the path toward good government and restored public trust.

And we can let people know we’re doing it: in our own news products, by word of mouth among opinion leaders, even by a coordinated public-service ad campaign in print, broadcast and online media.

Otherwise, citizens may not know what they have until it’s too late.

'Finish line of my 50-year dash'

It's about time we saw some news from our industry that elicits a smile rather than a panic attack. Here's one such item: Bob Frisk retired this month after 50 YEARS of covering high-school sports for the Daily Herald. In his final column, published Dec. 5, Bob refers to retirement as "the finish line of my 50-year dash."

You can't put 50 years of your life into something without having it become a part of you. Yes, I am retiring, but a part of me is staying on and, hopefully, will remain in the positive way the Daily Herald covers high school sports and the way our reporters continue to understand they are dealing with impressionable teenagers and not prima donna and overpaid professionals.

Here's a sampling of praise from Daily Herald colleagues: Barry Rozner, Jim Slusher, John Radtke and Marty Maciaszek.

Time for NINA to revisit its mission

From Sharon Boehlefeld, NINA's outgoing president:

As we’ve talked about conferences and workshops during the past few years, the NINA board has repeatedly discussed what we can do that will be most valuable to newspaper journalists in a multi-media world.

Last summer, we started talking about whether we should redefine ourselves in light of the new media realities. After all, even the smallest papers among our members are dabbling with Web sites. The largest are leading the way with a variety of multimedia platforms and partnerships with radio and television.

Board members also have talked briefly about whether we should change our name from Northern Illinois Newspaper Association to Northern Illinois News Association. In a straw poll at our fall banquet, about half the room supported a change. We aren’t yet bringing that to a membership vote, but we welcome pro and con discussion from our members here on Digital Ink.

At our October board meeting, an ad hoc committee (Rick Nagel, Lonny Cain, Roger Ruthhart and Jim Killam) presented a proposal for a new mission statement. Our current statement reads: "NINA is an organization of newspaper professionals dedicated to advancing print journalism, print-journalism education and training in northern Illinois."

Knowing that few of us are still only “print” journalists – even as we acknowledge a preference for the medium – the committee attempted to come up with a broader statement. The proposal reads: "NINA’s mission is to advance the quality, integrity and credibility of journalism and journalism education in northern Illinois."

We all know our industry is reeling from changes, both in and out of our control. Printed newspapers are, in a sense, an endangered species. Yet, it was the printed word – the press – for which the First Amendment was penned.

We all believe our medium is still critically important in our communities, and will probably have some kind of future for years to come. We remain dedicated to professional standards in news gathering and reporting, professional standards that we believe should not disappear just because our means of delivering news may change.

But, just because this board thinks our organization might need some redirection as we move into the future, that doesn’t mean our membership sees things the same way. At our fall conference, I briefly explained the board’s discussions and read the current and proposed versions of the mission statement. I also invited comments here on Digital Ink. The comment period remains open until Jan. 15.

A change of the mission statement requires approval of two-thirds of members voting at a general membership meeting. A general meeting, part of our Jan. 16 board session, will begin at 10 a.m. in the Student Life building on the campus of Northern Illinois University. Please join us as we take the vote on our mission statement.

No holiday cheer here

Yikes. Editor & Publisher reports this week that a major credit-ratings firm predicts ...

Newspaper and newspaper groups are likely to default on their debt and go out of business next year -- leaving "several cities" with no daily newspaper at all, Fitch Ratings says in a report on media released Wednesday." Fitch believes more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010," the Chicago-based credit ratings firm said in a report on the outlook for U.S. media and entertainment.

Fix it

Just received the Dec. 8 issues of Time and Newsweek. Time's cover story is, "How to Fix America's Schools." Newsweek's cover is "How to Fix the World." So, if you're in a fixing mood but also in a hurry, Newsweek would appear to be your more comprehensive choice.

'Black Friday' death points to us, too

Interesting, introspective column by David Carr in today's New York Times, about the Wal-Mart employee being trampled to death on "Black Friday." Carr writes:

The willingness of people to walk over another human being to get at the right price tag raises the question of how they got that way in the first place. But in the search for the usual suspects and parceling of blame, the news media should include themselves.
Just a few days ago, the same newspaper writers and television anchors who are now wearily shaking their heads at the collective bankruptcy of our mass consumer culture were cheering all of it on.

Attention job seekers

Inland Press Association lets you post your resume for free here. They also offer a free directory of newspaper internships. It’s not a comprehensive list, but still.

And a reminder that NINA offers free help-wanted ads for news media and related fields.