A Death in Denver

The Rocky Mountain News in Denver will publish its last edition Friday, after Scripps failed to find a buyer.

John Kass on getting a job in journalism

Tribune columnist John Kass was our keynote speaker Friday at the Illinois College Press Association Convention. Some highlights:

• He compared Illinois politicians to “medieval warlords who put their idiot children in front of the peasants and say ‘this is your new leader.’”
  
• “In politics, friends and enemies are not permanent. Interests are. … Don’t be friends with these people.”
  
• Bloggers who report can find jobs in this business. Bloggers who only ruminate will not. “Change out of your pajamas and go outside with a notebook.”
  
• “Don’t use your reporter notebook as a weapon.” In other words, keep it in your pocket or purse when you first arrive at a scene, and just talk to people first.
  
• There are three ways people get jobs in journalism. One, your parents know people. Two, you make yourself a top student and get all the best internships (which often are unpaid and many students can’t afford to take). Or three, you get the stories that groups 1 and 2 don’t get.
  
• If you want to move up the ladder in journalism, “Give yourself five years and work your butt off.” Use nights and weekends to work on enterprise stories. “Get to work early. Stay late. Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut. Write with a voice, and with facts.”
  
• The quickest way to the Tribune or other destination paper from a small suburban paper is to get the stories they don’t. “If you are beating the hell out of them, they’re going to notice you.”

'Tinker' turns 40

Here's a story from Randy Swikle highlighting the 40th anniversary of a huge First Amendment ruling. School administrators need to be reminded of this case. Randy authorizes newspapers to use this story. That's him in the photo with Mary Beth Tinker.

By Randy Swikle

With a small strip of black cloth, Mary Beth Tinker, a 13-year-old junior high student, changed every public school in America.

It was 40 years ago — Feb. 24, 1969 — when she got the U.S. Supreme Court to say students have First Amendment rights in school. In a landmark ruling, Tinker v. Des Moines Board of Education, the court said, “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional right to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Mary Beth’s offense was to wear a black armband to school on Dec. 16, 1965, to protest the Vietnam War. The principal of her Des Moines school got word of the planned protest and met with other administrators to quickly adopt a policy prohibiting students from wearing armbands. Mary Beth and two others were suspended when they refused to remove their armbands.

“Students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate,” the Supreme Court ruled. “They may not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved.”

The court set parameters for students and for school authorities: Student expression must not be libelous or obscene, not cause a clear and substantial disruption or not otherwise invade the rights of others. Principals may not censor speech simply to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.

During the past 25 years, the Tinker decision has been modified by several new court cases but never reversed. With the goal of balancing pedagogical concerns with democratic education, the courts have defined instances when student freedoms can be curtailed further in order to protect the responsibility of school officials to implement the school mission and to act in loco parentis.

However, the Supreme Court has never backtracked in its assertion that students have First Amendment rights that must be respected in school.

Applying Tinker and more recent First Amendment decisions to student newspapers, the courts seem to be saying students do not have unbridled control of their publications, but neither do administrators have the power to arbitrarily censor the student press for reasons that are not educationally and democratically sound. School officials are expected to be viewpoint neutral in issues of censorship, intervening only when students have exceeded the limits of protected speech or have clearly contravened the school mission in a way that legally justifies censorship.

Controversial topics are fair game for student newspaper coverage, whether or not the paper is considered a public forum. Yet, some administrators favor maintaining “tranquil waters” over creating “waves” in the pool of ideas expressed at school. Such an attitude can demoralize students and interfere with the very purpose of education — enlightenment.

Sometimes, in ways contrary to the school mission, administrators yield to political pressures or try to hide personal vulnerabilities. Sometimes, in ways contrary to noble ethics, student journalists prioritize self-interests and use the power of the press to inflate their egos rather than to serve their readers.

Every partner of a school community should be vigilant in guarding the First Amendment and promoting awareness when the protection it offers is abused. School officials should use reason rather than clout in working with students to nurture a free and responsible student press. Student journalists should be empathetic to administrator concerns and weigh their perspectives as they hope to have their own considered.

The 1969 Tinker decision is an important lesson in American democracy. Mary Beth Tinker, just 13 years old, inspired change that gave young people a new appreciation of their rights as citizens. She spoke with a black armband.

Randy Swikle, a retired journalism teacher from Johnsburg High School, is Illinois director of the Journalism Education Assoc. He also is a board member of the Northern Illinois Newspaper Assoc. and of the Illinois Press Foundation.

Encouraging words

One of our 2008 grads dropped by on Friday, then sent a follow-up e-mail. She has not found full-time job in journalism yet, but she is taking such an upbeat look at a dismal job market that I thought this was worth sharing (with her permission):

The truth is, you graduate college thinking you'll have a full time job w/ benefits lined up right afterwards but that's just really not the case for most people anymore. It may take a bit longer. I think the sooner they realize that that's OK, i think the more prepared they'll begin to feel.

A job right after college doesn't necessarily have to be with a prestigious daily working as a reporter. It could be interning or freelancing at a neighborhood weekly or monthly magazine which can help get your foot in the door to something bigger later on. Even if this contract job doesn't pan out for me, I know I made enough contacts with the people that I worked with. They're keeping an eye out for positions for me, and I can continue to freelance.

I'm not going to lie, for a while I was pretty desperate. But then I realized it was going to be OK and that my prior vision for the future was a bit skewed. Once I adjusted it, I realized I could still do the same things I wanted to do (writing) but just not exactly in the same forum I had expected, at least for now until the job market picks up and I have more of a choice. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury to be picky. While a full time job with benefits is ideal, contract work and freelancing is pretty cool too-- I'm enjoying it.

From my experience though, employers in our industry are looking for people who are really active in social media, so facebook, twitter, linkedin, delicious, digg, ning etc. and they want people who blog. Any experience using it in a business perspective is a HUGE plus.

She also shared some of the links that have led her to freelance and contract work, which I've posted at our job-hunting site.

Illinois Journalist of the Year

Forwarding this from the NIU Department of Communication. Please consider nominating someone! Nomination form and more info are here.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS
2009 ILLINOIS JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR

Northern Illinois University
Department of Communication


DEADLINE - MARCH 2, 2009

THE AWARD

The Illinois Journalist of the Year award is presented annually by the Department of Communication of Northern Illinois University to a person who has made a significant contribution to the mass media or, through them, to the public they serve, either as a result of a single accomplishment during the past year, or through a sustained effort over a longer period of time.

ELIGIBILITY

Any journalist employed by an Illinois mass medium, or an Illinois resident associated with a national medium serving the people of Illinois, is eligible to receive the award.

NOMINATIONS

Nominations for the award are solicited from the media of mass communication of Illinois, professional organizations and associations in this state, and leading educators in its schools and departments of journalism. We invite your to nominate a media person of your choice.

JUDGING

A panel of judges consisting of the chair of the Department of Communication, members of its faculty, and student presidents of appropriate journalism organizations at NIU will consider all nominations and choose the award winner.

PRESENTATION

The “Illinois Journalist of the Year – 2009” award will be presented at NIU’s 2009 Journalism Banquet in April. A scholarship also will be presented in the recipient’s name to a deserving journalism student.

Archives and background checks

Got a call this morning from someone who graduated from NIU 18 years ago. In 1991, he was charged with a drug crime and the paper reported on it. He says he paid the penalty and a judge later expunged the record.

But now he’s looking for a job and is concerned that this will pop up in a background check and eliminate him contention. So, he asked if his name could be removed from our archives. I googled his name and, sure enough, there’s the 1991 Northern Star story on the first page of results.

If he provided proof of the court disposition, we could go back into the archives and add a footnote that his record has been expunged. But that's only part of his problem, because the google search will still bring up his name next to a drug crime ... and that might be enough to eliminate him from a pool of job applicants.

This is coming up more and more often. How are others responding to these kinds of requests?

Saving newspapers, a nickel at a time

In this week's cover story, TIME's Walter Isaacson takes an interesting look at saving the newspaper industry. Among the"shocking" recommendations:

• Readers should pay for what we produce for them; We weaken our bond with readers if we do not depend on them directly for revenue.


• Come up with a one-click method of micropayment. Think iTunes.

Excerpt:

According to a Pew Research Center study, a tipping point occurred last year: more people in the U.S. got their news online for free than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines. Who can blame them? Even an old print junkie like me has quit subscribing to the New York Times, because if it doesn't see fit to charge for its content, I'd feel like a fool paying for it.
This is not a business model that makes sense. Perhaps it appeared to when Web advertising was booming and every half-sentient publisher could pretend to be among the clan who "got it" by chanting the mantra that the ad-supported Web was "the future." But when Web advertising declined in the fourth quarter of 2008, free felt like the future of journalism only in the sense that a steep cliff is the future for a herd of lemmings.
Newspapers and magazines traditionally have had three revenue sources: newsstand sales, subscriptions and advertising. The new business model relies only on the last of these. That makes for a wobbly stool even when the one leg is strong. When it weakens — as countless publishers have seen happen as a result of the recession — the stool can't possibly stand.

'Free is not enough'

Fantastic piece by Chris Anderson in the weekend Wall Street Journal called, "The Economics of Giving It Away." It's about how so many online businesses -- including newspapers -- have been built on giving away digital goods and services ... and how in a down economy that model won't sustain itself. Excerpt:

... YouTube is still struggling to match its popularity with revenues and Facebook is selling commodity ads for pennies after its effort to charge for intrusive advertising led to a user backlash. And news-sharing site Digg, for all its millions of users, still doesn't make a dime. A year ago, that hardly mattered: The business model was "build to a lucrative exit, preferably in cash." But now the exit doors are closed and cash flow is king.

Does this mean that Free will retreat in a down economy? Probably not. The psychological and economic case for it remains as good as ever -- the marginal cost of anything digital falls by 50% every year, making pricing a race to the bottom, and "Free" has as much power over the consumer psyche as ever. But it does mean that Free is not enough. It also has to be matched with Paid. Just as King Gillette's free razors only made business sense paired with expensive blades, so will today's Web entrepreneurs have to not just invent products that people love, but also those that they will pay for. Not all of the people or even most of them -- free is still great marketing and bits are still too cheap to meter -- but enough to pay the bills. Free may be the best price, but it can't be the only one.