Journalism Evolution 101
Published by Al Adomite on August 28th, 2008
I’m getting ready to attend the MU Journalism School’s Centennial celebration. It’s an interesting time to be bringing together so much journalism talent into one place. I’ll probably do some blogging inspired by some of the themes from the event.
Everyone will surely be talking about this story:
In a bombshell announcement in the world of sports journalism, star columnist Jay Mariotti has abruptly resigned from the Chicago Sun-Times.
Mariotti told CBS 2’s Dorothy Tucker that he decided to quit after covering the Olympics in Beijing because newspapers are in serious trouble, and he did not want to go down with the ship.
“It’s been a tremendous experience, but I’m going to be honest with you, the profession is dying,” Mariotti said. “I don’t think either paper [Sun-Times or Chicago Tribune] is going to survive.
“To showcase your work … you need a stellar Web site and if a newspaper doesn’t have that, you can’t be stuck in the 20th century with your old newspaper.”
It’s a far cry from when I graduated undergrad in 1997. I remember that our news director’s twin-brother worked for CNN.com, and -this is unbelievable- one of my former classmates actually turned down a job offer from them for a local TV sports job. Show’s how things have changed in 10 years.
Speaking of sports, I find it fascinating how sports journalists have excelled in the medium-merging of news writing, TV, radio and web.
I’d cite another former classmate and friend Derrick Gould of someone who’s leading the transition. I wrote him on Facebook recently complaining of the Gouldized sports world in St. Louis, but you can’t go anywhere without reading/seeing/hearing him. His real job is the Cardinals beat at the Post-Dispatch (though I have to admit I miss his hockey coverage). But, you’ll find he’s a regular on KMOX, and his blog, Birdland, is a must-read for Cardinal fans.
One of my favorite blogs, Columbia (MO) Tribune Tigers beat writer Dave Matter’s Behind the Stripes, is an essential for fans of Mizzou’s football team (GO TIGERS!). While still restrained by the limited space of the traditional newsprint medium by day (or sorry, the Tribune is the afternoon paper in Columbia), Matter empties his reporters notebook almost daily on the Blog. He answers usually four good questions from readers per post.
Imagine the age where reporters never interacted with their readership? Not anymore. The technologies that make’s Partisan Discourse possible is also now being used by newspapers, merging with video, and allowing news to flow beyond the traditional boundaries of the once-edited and clipped column inches.
I think it’s a shame that political writers or city beat reporters aren’t taking the same approach. I don’t know how many times a local Republican has complained about the coverage of some controversial article, asking why a figurehead didn’t say this or respond to that. Most of the time, they probably did answer those questions, it just didn’t make the newsprint-limited space given in the traditional format. But, nobody empties their notebook in political or city beat-writing. I think the industry could learn from their sports-writing counterparts.
More tomorrow on the negative aspects of this journalism evolution.
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October 20th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
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