The Future of News

I can’t wait to read the results of this study by Serena Carpenter at Arizona State University.

I’m particularly interested to see whether there’s a disconnect between the words that hiring managers use in their postings and the words that journalists themselves use to describe online news jobs. Also, job postings are an important “leading indicator” of changing duties and skills in the industry. My survey describes the present state of affairs, and it doesn’t do a good job predicting what the future will be or what hiring managers WANT the future to be.

Most often, when I’m talking with folks about online journalism the conversation centers around online publishing. But a quick hit last Friday in The News & Observer’s Under the Dome blog reminds us not to forget about using the Web as a reporting tool. David Ingram used LinkedIn to research a former Wachovia lobbyist, and found a misleading profile of the lobbyist. And, of course, there’s the New York Daily News’ recent use of MySpace to cover the story about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy.

Here’s a quick rundown of some prominent social networking and user-generated content sites and how to research them.

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While working today on a chapter for a new edition of Reaching Audiences, I was re-reading the 1945 Atlantic Monthly article in which Vannevar Bush lays out his concept of the hypermedia world we’re now building. In it, he not only envisions a new method of storing and sorting information but a new industry of people who do so.

“There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.”

Perhaps I have a perverted perspective, but MAN does that sound like a sexxxy job description — pioneering, democratic, joyful. If these qualities stir your heart, then you’re a journalist in any medium.

A quick tag cloud of all the words that appeared in the job titles of the 109 people we identified as working in online editorial content at N.C. newspapers. This idea was inspired by Eric Ulken of the L.A. Times, and programmed by TagCrowd.com

Several of my colleagues have also posted to their blogs some thoughts about the Bus Tour. You’ll see from the blog titles that we were an eclectic group. I like eclectic groups.

• Anna Beeber, an assistant professor in the School of Nursing
• Miriam H. Labbok’s blog on “infant feeding and the mother/baby dyad.”

Also not to be missed is the blog of my journalism colleague Jock Lauterer, who does his own tour every summer of the state’s community newspapers. He’s on the road now.

Last week, I gave a presentation at the N.C. Press Association’s Newspaper Academy at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

• MP3 of Presentation (1:12, 16.5 MB)
• One Pager: Reporting for Online (PDF)
• One Pager: Writing a Blog That Isn’t Blah (PDF)
• One Pager: Search Engine Optimization (PDF)

Next week, I join 38 other UNC-Chapel Hill faculty members on a five-day bus tour across the state — from Shackleford Banks to Cherokee. The Tar Heel Bus Tour was launched in 1997 to give new faculty members a head start on learning about the state we serve. (more…)