Firstly, I can hardly keep up with this blog, while keeping up (or attemting to) with classes and The Stylus. I have an abundance of things I want to talk about, even if they’re not related to college or professional journalism, but it’s finding the energy to talk about in this medium that normally comes last.  Perhaps choosing this as a topic for my class was a bad idea… I’m sure once the summer is here, this will be updated much more frequently, particularly since my internship will be requiring me to do weekly logs, in order to receive class credit.  Woo.

I also have a ridiculously short attention span at the end of the day.  Granted, it’s only 6:34 p.m. But for me, that’s the end of the day.  It was non-stop today, too. This makes it difficult to blog when I can never remember what I wanted to talk about once I get here to the dashboard.

Oh, I remember now.
Multimedia is a lot more difficult than we all probably think.  I’ve been tediously working on getting a video department set up for The Stylus, starting next year.  We have a video editor, Nick, who has been working very hard with me on getting everything set up.  When I first thought of the idea, I thought we would buy him a SONY Handycam and send him on his way.  Apparently, this is not going to work.  There’s XLR cables and microphones and jibs and dollies and tripods and mic flags and firewires and hard drives and lots of software, to name some of the things thrown at me in the past week.  I’m trying to keep up with him, trying to understand what he does in order to help him with any issues next year.  But boy, video is a whole new world.  I give a lot of credit to any newsroom that has successfully brought in a video crew, it’s hard work.  I’m sure they had a lot more people working on the implementation than The Stylus had, but with hardworking and supportive professors, we finally have a set program.  And a huge bill at the video store.

With the question of necessity of a director, comes the question of the necessity of the social media, itself. While these tools (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.) are beneficial to use to find stories, is it super beneficial to be using them ourselves?

Twitter is useful for sharing stories. But with the way that advertising is dying, don’t we want to bring in the most amount of money, as possible? Why should we share our headlines on this Web site, when the users can easily go to our site directly to see what’s up. Users are still getting back to the original site, but in a round-about way. If they’ll follow us on Twitter, shouldn’t they be reading our Web site, anyway?

Facebook is another pseudo-useless thing for news networks. Sure, it gets your name out but let our work do the talking. With all the rush-rush, hush-hush going on, let’s see strong reporting so that readers are inclined to keep coming back.

Though I know most of these tools are super beneficial to use to find the good stories, we shouldn’t need things to help us promote the good stories. Perhaps social media is expanding media, but it’s certainly not getting better as it gets bigger.

“If a person is credible, they have a good reputation and people trust them. If a press release is credible, it is a believable and trustworthy source of news,” the article reads. While the article focuses on ways for PR teams to make sure their releases are credible, newspapers need to make sure they’re credible, as well.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things a college newspaper could deal with is gaining respect and credit. With editors coming and going, credibility can hardly ever be established. You see, credibility takes time … and in a college newsroom, that just isn’t possible. The longest most editors are even with the paper is two years (there are exceptions … like the ambitious freshmen), but that doesn’t leave a lot of time for readers to trust particular names.

Major newspapers have a whole life to precede them; there’s not traditionally one face connected to the face of the paper. In smaller communities like colleges, students get to know their editors. One mistake and credibility is gone. Credibility to the person’s skills, and to the facts of the entirety of the paper.

Starting April 1, many local papers are closing their doors and making way for one giant paper.  Instead of the Hamilton & Morrisville Tribune, the Oneida Press, the Canastota Bee-Journal and the Chittenango-Bridgeport Times, there will be the Madison County Eagle.  Sounds so exciting.

You see, I write for these papers when I have time at home.  I’ve worked on-and-off with the editor of the C-B Times.  I helped out with design for the CB-J.  I had a subscription to the Oneida Press.  I was born in Hamilton (figured I needed a relation to that paper, too.)  These papers are definitely part of the reason I am in journalism, and helped me to know what I do.  Now, instead, there will be one paper replacing all of the others.  This one paper is going to have a page for each town.

Satellite offices have been closed.  Papers have been condensed.  Maybe this explains why I still haven’t been compensated for my freelance work in the past six months.

“We understand the special role that you as newspapers play in your communities” the Town News Web site reads.  “We understand how the Internet is changing media consumption. And we’re using that knowledge to help newspapers “own the Internet” in their markets by providing easy-to-use content management systems and revenue generating tools.”

Town News owns smaller newspapers.  And they’re keeping them alive!

Hope No. 2: The Post-Standard.

This article caught my eye as I was getting my free news, this morning.  The Post-Standard, my favorite newspaper (and my summer internship), is making changes.  While the changes depress me, it will be better.  Smaller newspapers, smaller costs.

I sit down every morning during breaks and read the news.  I’ve realized not a lot of unique reporting is being done in dailies.  Also realizing this is the P-S, cutting back on some of these things.  They’re formatting all news together, creating one big section instead of two smaller sections.  The Madison section recently turned in to a Local section, covering multiple counties.  That section is now converging with the front section.  While I will miss the extensive coverage of my own county, I know that this is necessary for the big stories to still be covered in newspaper fashion.  That is, in an extensive, accurate way.  TV stations are quick and dirty.  Newspapers take their time.

The best glimmer of hope came from this excerpt:

“So changes are coming, but our commitment to covering local news is unwavering. It is the reason why The Post-Standard is the best-read Sunday newspaper in America and one of the top 10 best-read daily newspapers.
While other media are losing readers or market share, The Post-Standard is gaining readers. The most recent numbers from Scarborough Research showed that both the daily and Sunday newspapers gained 1 percent over the last 12 months. When you look at our audience over an entire week, both in print and online, we reach 81 percent of all adults in the market.”

Amongst all the doom, little pieces of doom-appearing hope is starting to shine through.  Maybe, just maybe, newspapers will still exist by the time I graduate!

A new Web site, hosted by 10,000words.net, showcases the somewhat amusing, yet still depressing, tales of the latest industry casualty. Journalism-is-dead.com posts sentences and comments about the end of the journalism world, as we know it today.

Comments range from funny: “Newspapers may be dead but they sure are turning out to be kick ass zombies,” to sincere “Just in case no-one told you, printed newspapers are dead. We know it, they know it; we’re just pretending they’re doing fine to be polite.”

Even though the field is dwindling, this doesn’t mean journalism is dead. It means print is running downhill, wildly. A change of technology makes a change of scenery. Many newspapers are already implementing ways to get revenue off the Web; it won’t be long until the print has ceased and the Web will take over. When the world only has one option for a place to get news, they’re going to have to pay to read it.

One such skill is the knowledge of a free press.  I’ve realized that more and more people are ignoring the reasoning  behind a free press, looking to only see and hear what they choose.  What most aren’t able to grasp, is that this country’s foundation is in the spirit of print and broadcast news media.

Journalists aren’t out to get anyone, we’re holding people accountable to the public promises that were made prior.  We’re cutting down the direct propaganda and are setting out to allow people to form own decisions.  At least, good journalism is doing this.

I’ve been reading the articles that keep popping up lately about people being dissappointed in the news media for one reason or another, but it’s all full of the same core reason — they don’t like what we’re writing.

I hope in the next few years I can see the print media get a little more involved in this fight, proving that we not only have the right to say what we feel necessary, but we’ll fight for our right to say it too.

Christmas break found me poor.  In P&C, I found paychecks.  I went back.

Summer break found me poorer.  I vowed never to go back.

And so we ended my run at the P&C 103 with the following Christmas break.  I worked two weeks, became sick and tired (literally), vowing never to step foot in the door with my navy blue polo again.

It’s been a year, but I am, once again, broke.  So I meandered to Manlius, looking for gainful employment.  And gainful I found.  But I’ve found the same old problems with the grocery store life, just a different crowd.

This blog will probably devote a lot of time to my grocery store pet peeves, though this will cover the first.

At P&C, we have questions that are imperative to ask.  Do you have your wild card, did you find what you are looking for.  As human beings, we extend the common courtesy to ask how your  day is, acting as peasants for your every need, want and whimper.

That being said, get off of your cell phone.  No, I don’t care about what Laura wore to the Christmas party.  I don’t care to hear about your cheating husband.  Or your grandfather’s nasty rash.  I care about getting your money for your overpriced goods, and tending to the next customer so management is compelled to sign my paychecks.  That is what I care about.  So unless that cell phone connected to your ear is going to a) cure cancer or b) sign my paycheck, I would suggest you listen to me when you get to the forefront of the register.

If you don’t automatically decide that your frivolous conversation is not more important than manners, I have crafted a foolproof plan.  I wait to ring the groceries.  And I wait.  And then I wait some more.

Eventually, the customer looks at me.  And I tell them politely that I will wait until they are ready.  I don’t want to interrupt their conversation with my unimportant babble about saving money, after all.

They always hang up their expensive phone, put it in their furry pockets and hand me their diamond-rimmed keychains where their Wild Card rests.  Did I mention I work in the uppity part of central New York?