HM Magazine Intern Diary: 6.1.09

June already, huh? It seems like nothing’s easy around here lately. For example, it took Doug and I a good while to roll and tape 65 or so HM t-shirts to take to Cornerstone, and we still felt like we needed a third or fourth assembly line member. There are a lot of things like that around here. Doug is taking ad sales back under his supervision, which means he and I have to sell all the ads that essentially support the entire magazine. We’ll also have to write more of the articles, which will be good experience but more pressure. Subscriptions are important as well, so we’re constantly having to think of new ways to get more people interested in the magazine.

All this while companies are cutting back on advertising budgets and individuals are eliminating discretionary spending, which would probably include music.

I’ve been designing ad banners for another website today, which is something I’m glad to be learning, but isn’t necessarily my area of specialization. I’ll be calling stores this week to make sure they sell HM, and if not, trying to convince them to carry it.

It definitely feels like I’m starting with a blank page staring me in the face, taunting me that I’m going to fail.

I guess this is good practice dealing with my fear of uncertainty and really a test of my willingness to rely on God and trust that he will help us get everything done if that’s His will.

Do you have any ideas on who would want to advertise in HM, or how to get more people interested in reading HM?

Don’t fear the reaper,
Corey Erb

“A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?” – Ecclesiastes 2:24-25

Answers for the sinking newspaper industry?

I stumbled across a couple articles on UPI-U today on the failing business model of the newspaper industry. Marlo Watanabe and Abdi Latif Sheikh both quoted from this Time Magazine article.

The debate centers on whether readers will pay for content on the internet, and if not, how else can newspapers generate enough revenue to stick around? Micropayment, where users would pay around a nickel per article or maybe $2 per month to access online content, is one option. But if the comments on another Time article are indicative of the online consensus, that ain’t gonna fly. It’d be interesting if newspapers started giving free Kindles or some similar viewer to subscribers, though. Sheikh quotes Time‘s Josh Quittner as saying:

In the boardrooms of some of the biggest publishers, people are already discussing giving away devices with subscriptions. Why not? In the end, it’s far cheaper, more efficient and more ecological for us than paper distribution — and more enjoyable for you than reading on the Web. And that’s the key.

Pay-for-content might be a way to monetize multimedia content as well, since readers might be more likely to pay for a solid video or slideshow than they might be for a regular article they can find seemingly anywhere, especially considering the prevalence of blogs and Twitter.

Another option two Yale bigwigs propose is endowing newspapers so they can benefit from 501(c)(3) tax exemptions. This might raise some conflict of interest questions if publications are receiving government grants, but it would greatly improve their chances of remaining solvent for the long haul.

One online publication I occasionally read, Truthout.org, aggregates news from many different sources and provides some original reporting and editorial content of its own, through the Fair Use exemption of Title 17 of U.S. Code Section 107. Major newspapers with stockholders definitely won’t go this route as it requires nonprofit standing, but for publications looking to spread the news and still pay their staff, this might be one way to go. Though relying on donations is going to be tough any time the public takes a hit in the pocketbook like right now.

So there are several options. Which seems workable to you? Or is there another one that’d work better?

Sports leagues’ official sites better than independent publications?

When it comes to multimedia content, NFL.com wiped the floor with all the major independent outlets’ coverage.

League sites are becoming the best option for reporting on the teams and games, especially for video.

For example, in the recent NFL Draft, SI.com had no multimedia content, while NFL.com had tons. Check out this story on B.J. Raji, with two videos, on him alone. That isn’t the only story with killer multimedia content, either.

This begs the question, though: Is it ethical for these leagues to be reporting on themselves?

Obviously they have the resources, unlike many media companies anymore. And at the end of every MLB.com story, for example, they post a little disclaimer like this:

Carrie Muskat is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Does this suffice, or do you still think there might be some conflict of interest?

The future of the newspaper industry

There’s one question looming large in the newspaper business: Will newspapers be able to survive in the current landscape of dwindling print advertisement revenues and a readership that’s ditching their print subscriptions in favor of online outlets?

At least there are a bunch of posts asking that question. I wanted to point out one in WalletPop awhile back, and one in the blog for the Good Men Project.

The post in the Good Men Project blog highlights the foresight one paper’s CEO had to sell to a larger media group and cashed in personally on the deal. While it’s a good story about one man who saw the problems with the antiquated business model, to me it’s more a story of that man’s greed paying off for the only person in the equation he cared about: himself. Sorrardly “Good Man” behavior.

The WalletPop article contains a good summary of the problems plaguing the industry. The corporatization of newspapers and free advertisement services like Craigslist have contributed to the demise of many stalwarts in the newspaper business, the author says.

Both posts are fairly well written (minus each containing minor spelling errors, which the WalletPop article bemoans as rife in blogs, ironically) and provide insight into a business that seems to be failing more every day.

But they, like so many posts in recent months on the situation, are heavy on the opinion and light on offering any sort of solution. Julie Tilsner, the author of the WalletPop article and herself a former journalist, does offer that small-town and neighborhood newspapers may see a resurgence as people realize the need for local news. This is a good suggestion. I’d like to see more, though. There are enough questions, we need more answers.

Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to offer any concrete game-changers, but hopefully in answering some of these questions we’ll be closer to a workable solution.

– How can a newspaper provide more of the multimedia (video, audio, picture slideshow) content that readers are going elsewhere for, and make money off the content?
– What role might innovations like Kindle have on retaining newspaper readership, while eliminating the need to wait till the next day for news?
– Are blogs like the two mentioned actually profitable, and where does their revenue come from?
– How can reader-friendly social media like Twitter and blogs be used by news organizations to increase revenue? Or is it just something fun that doesn’t make any impact in the bottom line?

What do you think? Where do you get your news? Do you pay for it? Or if not, do you spend money somewhere related to the news provider (e.g., clicking on ads, buying photos, etc.)?

Social networking and its uses for someone with hazy job prospects

A friend on Twitter, Alex de Carvalho, pointed out this story about a photojournalist who left his newspaper job and now uses social media to get his work out to what he believes is an even wider audience.

It brings up an important point for people like me who are trying to figure out how to get a job when nobody seems to be actively looking for potential employees, and fewer still are actually hiring. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m facing an identity crisis with a year left until I’m shoved out the door of this university without a place to live or a consistent paycheck (I love my job at Equinox Fitness Club but part-time front desk money isn’t even enough to afford a decent box to live in under I-95.)

I’ve always viewed social media with a good measure of distrust. It’s self-serving, breaks down communication and is handicapping our generation by making us incapable of picking up the phone and calling someone, or, heaven forbid, speaking to them in person. But I am slowly realizing that, like so many other things, how you use it makes all the difference.

I guess it’s like any other medium: If you put out good content, no matter what form it takes, it can be worth people’s time. But if you put out bad stuff, you’re just contributing to the noise.

It’s weird to see your boss on Twitter, but it’s a good lesson in how to post. Yes, he updates followers on personal stuff. But he also gets his listeners’ opinions on hard decisions about the magazine, posts links to new merchandise and magazine updates, spreads awareness about charities, and generally talks about the behind-the-scenes of the music industry and the magazine. It’s weird to feel like I know my boss for the summer before I even meet him in person, but his presence on Twitter seems like it adds a personal feel to the magazine that readers wouldn’t get elsewhere.

So hopefully I can take all these lessons and put some good stuff out there. If a potential employer stumbles upon it and is impressed, I will have used social media to my advantage. I guess that means, though, that I have to have a network big enough (or at least with the right contacts) that my content gets seen by somebody who matters. Or who knows somebody who matters. Point is, I got a year left to build that network.

Sports Illustrated: Getting it wrong, letting it slide

I haven’t had time to follow the NFL Draft at all, so when I saw this post on AOL, I decided to check it out.

Unfortunately, it left me scratching my head once again about how awful today’s journalism is.

Sports Illustrated’s Tony Pauline reported three weeks ago that B.J. Raji, a former Boston College defensive lineman, failed a drug test at the NFL Combine in February. The only problem was, the report was immediately disputed by Raji and his agent, as well as many other news outlets.

(J-school 101 lesson: Get that juicy story, then confirm it with several other sources. Especially when you’re dealing with sources who refuse to be named; they’re suspicious characters. Or when you’re writing something that may well ruin a kid’s career before it starts.)

Just in time to toss some fuel on the already-blazing bonfire of shadiness, SI decided to simply pull the story from its website, offering only a cursory “we’re taking it down while we investigate further” PR non-explanation.

The damage had been done, however. When you report something like that about an amateur athlete who’s looking at a multimillion dollar contract as a first round draft pick, you’re going to cost him some major dough. The difference between a top-10 pick and a second-day gamble may simply be a small question mark. And a positive drug test is a King Kong-sized question mark looming over any team thinking about paying him first round money.

Now SI finally decided to run a 40-word correction, three weeks after posting the original report, saying they “regret the error.”

Really? You regret nearly costing big dude a fat paycheck, just because you thought getting the story first would get you one? Sounds like you got your hand caught in the cookie jar, and now after running out of siblings (and pets… and mailmen) to blame, you’re finally admitting you might have eaten just one.

Bush league, SI.

Mercifully, the story isn’t over for Raji. The correction came with a few days left until the draft, so teams will have a chance to give him a second look as the top-10 pick he should be.

But the question remains: Where is Pauline in all this? Did he decide to take a vacation, having broken this major story? Did SI tell him to clam up, lest the magazine look worse for not making sure he checked his sources?

Publications get things wrong all the time, increasingly so as the drive to get the story online first deepens. But if it only takes a day or two to report a story that could cost a young man his career, why does it take three weeks to confirm that, yes, you blew it?

Further evidence that Sports Illustrated has lost any shred of journalistic integrity it once had. It only took one click (two, if you count annoyingly having to click to read page two of a story) to find other errors on SI.com. In Don Banks’ featured article on the front page, he misuses apostrophes twice in one paragraph, saying most glaringly “the Pacman Jones’ error,” where it should just be “the Pacman Jones error.” Call it a small mistake that most internet readers wouldn’t notice, but if you’re paid to write, shouldn’t you have at least a grasp of punctuation rules?

Man, if I needed yet another reason to be glad I’ve strayed from wanting to be a sportswriter, it’s this. I’m glad I escaped the draw to be part of a magazine with such a stellar record of journalism, which I see now is pretty much relegated to archival material.

I mean, the swimsuit issue is the only reason the magazine is still profitable, so I guess when you consider this money-grubbing, light-on-ethics business model it’s perhaps not as hard to see why SI would skimp on reporting ethics too.

Just another reason to continue ignoring Sports Illustrated.

Plus, NFL.com wipes the floor with SI’s multimedia content anyway, a thought I will return to in another post soon.

Unfortunate reality of being a journalist in college

Collegiate student-athletes and student journalists have a unique interaction that neither of them will likely face upon graduation. They’re peers at a university, and may even sit in the same classes together.

But outside the classroom, one group of students is responsible for reporting the newsworthy events of the other group. When opinions start to enter the picture, things can get nasty between these peers, as was the case recently at Hillsdale College, a small liberal arts college in Michigan.

Apparently the editorial staff at the college newspaper took issue to the baseball team’s attitude amidst losing nine of ten games. The newspaper ran a snarky, in my opinion downright disrespectful, editorial that threw the players under the bus and asked them to “lose the stride boys.”

The players’ response? Dump a bunch of roadkill and a dead goat on one of the editors’ front porch, allegedly.

This story has been getting national attention, but I read it first in Patrol Magazine.

First, lest anyone think this is just a jocks-picking-on-nerds situation, let me say that the editorial in question wasn’t one worth defending. For a college newspaper staff to call for college baseball student-athletes to change their attitudes off the baseball field is not its place. Who are you to tell Derek Jeter to not go clubbing when the Yankees are on a losing streak? Or Alfonso Soriano to spend more time in the cages and away from his family when he’s only hitting .280? Much less with amateur athletes like these.

But regardless of who was wrong (both were), this story points out the interesting dynamic that exists between journalists and athletes, especially at the college level.

Let’s just hope both sides learn something from this train wreck. Because once you graduate, killing a goat is called a felony, and writing poorly researched, unfounded editorials is called you’re fired.

Blog reader ADD

Tonight, my beat reporter friend and I discussed a topic I’ve found intriguing for a while: blog reader ADD.

For those not familiar with the concept, it’s the idea that frequent readers of blogs won’t bother to read posts longer than a browser page long. In other words, if they have to scroll or, heaven forbid, click to read more they won’t bother and they’ll just keep surfing.

Of course there are devoted followers that might actually read the whole thing but those are the cave dwellers you don’t want commenting on your stuff anyway, right?

This raises a large problem of how to make a concise point in approximately 200-400 words, depending on how severe your handicap of having to hit enter after every line is, like mine or this guy’s. Though it’s a good quality in Patrol’s case.

I had a severe case of reader ADD tonight when I came across this post on Politico. Politico will always greatly overshadow anything I attempt in this profession, but they fail on the reader ADD test.

Which brings me to my question and a challenge: All kidding aside, do you find yourself only actually reading (skimming the first and last words of each paragraph does not count) blog posts that are longer than a browser page long?

Now my personal challenge: Get this post to approximately a reader ADD-friendly length without cheating and previewing it. I need to learn to write a compelling post and just stop before it goes over the edge of readability.

I’m going to guess I failed.

*EDIT*: Turns out I made it, but just barely. Not too shabby for a whole post in which I neglected to make an actual point. Oh well, I’ll start with length and figure out that whole content thing at some point.

Cool use for Twitter

Twitter may have its detractors, but I’ve found at least one pro to go along with all the cons.

Check out this innovative use by New York-based TWS Passion Play. They’re tweeting the events of Jesus’ death on Good Friday from 12-3 today.

I’ve never been to a passion play (call me an anti-traditionalist, if that’s a word) so I wouldn’t really know if this is the same old thing you’d get every year around this time.

But I think it’s a pretty interesting use of Twitter to be able to follow along in “real time” with the account of the events as they happened on that day.

Better than the typical self-serving “Goin’ to the Grove, call me” Tweets at least.

Unpaid journalism internships

A classmate pointed out this article in the American Journalism Review about the trend of newspapers not paying interns.

Universities funding interns doesn’t really make sense to me, as it’s the newspaper that’s getting the benefit from having free or discounted labor, not the universities.

I agree with what Jim O’Brien, director of career services at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, says, that there are few other industries where interns aren’t paid.

Newspapers are struggling to be profitable with an antiquated business model, but their problems started before the economy at large began worsening. If they believe they’re offering valuable experience to students who intern, they’re right. But if they think they can expect interns to act as working reporters as they’re often expected without being paid, how is that right?

Often, news organizations want to have interns to supplement their full-time staff. But if there isn’t the possibility that these interns could turn their experience with the paper into a job with the paper, what is the draw there? I’d rather take a paying internship that isn’t going to get me a job with the organization with which I am interning than one that is unpaid and is similarly going nowhere.

That being said, I’m doing an unpaid magazine internship this summer and I have serious doubts about my job prospects with this publication. I guess I’m part of the problem, though.