Unjournalism

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I finally have Internet access at the NewComm Forum. I’ve spent most of the day watching everyone around me check e-mail, write blog posts and just generally enjoy the wonder that is wi-fi, while mine just wouldn’t work. Some sort of goofiness with the hotel’s authentication, coupled with my utter laziness in trying to fix it. That, and the sessions were good enough to keep me tuned in. Because I’m a geek.

I couldn’t spend the day blogging about the conference during the conference, as I had intended, so I’m going to try to put some extra thought into the later-than-expected posts I throw up later. In the meantime, though, I must say (again, keep my indisputable geekdom in mind here) I’m quite pumped to have met Shel Holtz today.

We and others around us had a good chat over lunch about everything from the fate of newspapers (not as dire as many think) to the future of widgets and RSS (you’d better come to the next NewComm Forum). Bummed, though, that his colleague Neville Hobson couldn’t be here. These guys co-host the For Immediate Release podcast, which I enjoy greatly. They’re bright and insightful and apparently dedicated to improving the community of communicators — a rather respectable set of traits.

I met some other very cool, very bright people today, too. Tom Foremski and I had a great walkin’-the-halls chat about the way newswires are changing (are the doomed…?!). And while I didn’t actually meet Todd Defren, I nodded eagerly a lot when he said things during the session on social media news releases. Todd’s a bright guy with some great ideas.

More to come later on all of this stuff. No time now. Battery’s dying.

Tags: future by Mike Keliher
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A good article from a great writer on the future of journalism, as envisioned by Gannett, publisher of USA Today and a hundred billion other newspapers. The article from BusinessWeek’s Jon Fine talks about Gannett’s strategy for a new journalism — “pro-am,” they call it. The professionals do the heavy lifting, and the amateurs fill in the details. This will be the new approach at Gannett’s newspapers and eventually it’s TV outlets, as well.

More from Jonny Fine:

Perhaps the best early example of this fused approach took place at the Fort Myers News-Press. Home buyers were getting whacked with massive bills—as much as $30,000—for simple water- and sewer-line connections. The News-Press kicked off its probe with a short item, in the paper and on its Web site, announcing it was looking into these fees, and, by the way, did anyone have anything to share? After that: the deluge. Certain documents surfaced, suggesting potentially illegal activity involving bids; local engineers scrutinized blueprints posted online. These were posted and feverishly discussed in forums, which in turn generated leads and drove follow-up coverage in print and on the Web. It’s “a whole different way of building a story,” says Executive Editor Kate Marymont. The “microsite” that hosted that chatter became The News-Press’ most-trafficked, a position it maintains today.

How incredible is that? Ass-kickin’ journalism in an era in which no one wants to pay for it (neither the publishers [in terms of staff] nor the consumers [in seemingly any terms])! Beautiful. I’m genuinely excited to see what more examples of this new journalism — don’t any of you dare start talking about “journalism 2.0″; that’s such a lame and lazy buzzword-ification — we’ll soon see. This makes we want to get into the journalism business. Wait, does this count as being “in the business”?

Tags: future, journalism by Mike Keliher
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