HM Magazine Intern Diary: 7.30.09

Here it is… the last post before I head back to Illinois (before I head to Baltimore… before I head to Miami) so I’ll keep it short.

We went to see blessthefall and August Burns Red last night at Emo’s in Austin, and I can’t think of a better way to end my time here. Blessthefall was insane, the lead singer singing from hanging upside down from the rafters above the pit and 1-4 stage divers onstage at a time. August Burns Red was good too, especially since it was about 150 degrees in the pit and all the band members were fighting to keep from passing out.

I said goodbye to Kelly last night – and Kelly, if you’re reading, make sure this issue actually comes out, k? Ha I had fun this summer, hope you did too. (Follow her Intern Diary too, it’s better/less pointless rambl-y than mine.)

Thanks again to Tornado for the food for the road. If it wasn’t for you, Melissa and my mom sending me food I’d have gotten skinnier this summer haha.

I finished my Scream The Prayer Tour review Monday late so check it out if you haven’t and let me know what you think.

Here are the results to the survey so far:

You can still vote and I’ll post the results on my personal blog.

Which brings me to goodbye, follow my personal blog and Twitter if you like, and don’t be a stranger.

Peace,
Corey Erb

“Names is for tombstones.” – some dude.

HM Magazine Intern Diary: 7.2.09

Where’d that week go? Sorry for the silence on this end, it’s been quiet around here since Doug’s at Cornerstone. Well, quiet until today. Warped Tour in San Antonio was today, in case you missed my 38 zillion Twitter updates.

Kelly and I will have a review of the event up tomorrow and I’ll post a bunch of pictures. I took 620 total so I think I might have a few to share.

My body hates me right now,
Corey Erb

“Where there is love there is life.” – Mohandas K. Gandhi

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?

Twitter spreading the swine flu?

Okay, maybe that’s misleading. A post in the Atlantic suggests Twitter might have fueled some of the mass hysteria that was swine flu.

Being able to blog breaking events is a nice way to get the news first, but is there a point at which we say, “look, we could probably do without all the updates every time we’re afraid”? Citizen journalism undoubtedly has its place, but a gatekeeper like an editor would hopefully weed out some of the unnecessary noise.

Is that whole H1N1/swine flu/overblown chicken pox thing still going on anyway? Call me young and reckless but I just don’t have the time or desire to follow it. How would we live if we didn’t constantly have something to fear?

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.

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.