The School of Entrepreneurial Journalism

Tenore, M (2010). New CUNY program to equip students to start journalism-based businesses. Poynter Online. Retrieved from http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=191210

This article and interview comes courtesy of Poynter Online, which is the site of the journalism-based Poynter Institute. Its first section summarizes the City University of New York’s recent decision to establish the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, which will be the nation’s first school to offer a master’s degree in that emerging field of study. It then follows with an interview from Jeff Jarvis, the center’s leader and a professor at CUNY. Jarvis explains that the “Entrepreneurial” Journalism degree will strive to familiarize students with the overlap – not the separation – that happens with reporting the news and trying to make a business/money from doing so. Students will learn how to establish businesses and then actually do so with the program’s support. According to Jarvis, the program’s demands of its students are extensive, and decidedly rooted in business, not news reporting: “[We want students] to be able to recognize opportunities, conceptualize and plan a business, research that business with customers, present that business to investors and customers, understand the essential skills of running a business and of media (e.g., how advertising works), be able to work with other constituencies (technologists, partners, salespeople, etc.), and be able to manage projects.” The degree will both be offered to current students, as well as career journalists who wish to enroll in the program. The article also notes other steps journalism programs are taking to remain relevant (NYU partnering with the New York Times, Columbia’s journalism/computer science dual program, etc).

CUNY’s decision to take a decisive, economically-centered slant with its graduate students further reflects the demands being made on journalists in the field today, and how those demands are shifting away from being one who simply reports the news. But more importantly, it reveals the reform taking place on the academic level. Academia is one of the last and strongest pillars of old media, and if the old ways of teaching journalism become obsolete on a university level, then it stands to reason that the kind of “journalists” that will surface in ten or maybe even five years will have a drastic effect on the climate as a whole. To hear Jarvis tell it, aspiring journalists (or at least journalism students) will need to develop a diverse range of skills in both the economic and technological spheres to remain relevant. This has always been true, of course, but for another reputable university to officially acknowledge this via the establishment of an entire new program certainly solidifies the notion. CUNY’s Tow-Knight Center follows the noted alterations made by NYU and Columbia, as well as CU-Boulder’s proposed reimagining/discontinuance of their program. Essentially what we are seeing with all this is the production lines for “old media” journalists dying off, and a broad imagining of the form that “new media” will take on – or at least how it will be taught. Frankly, it all seems to be suggesting that the practice of actually reporting the news is becoming incidental to journalism. For Jarvis and CUNY, it is clear that the new media scribes who successfully establish themselves will be those who are the most adept at website design and self-promotion, not necessarily who writes the most compelling feature articles. Which is fine. The key point here is to see how the directions in which these fragmented (soon to be) former J-Schools are moving, and how that will impact both future journalists and the future of journalism. What will take place when these new waves of “new” journalists enter the job market, bearing different skill sets and literacies than those of even their direct predecessors? And, tying things more directly to CUNY, what are the costs and benefits of openly conflating news reporting and commerce? Certainly, those are two spheres that will always come into contact with one another, but should they really be interpreted and taught as one inseparable body? If that is indeed the case (remotely or otherwise), then does one get privileged over another? Will CUNY professors instruct their students to shelve important stories if they threaten the successful commerce of a given “enterprise”?

Internet and the right to privacy

Cameron-Dow, J. (2009). 4. The question of crime: How much does the public have the right to know?. Pacific Journalism Review, 15(2), 71-84. Retrieved from Communication & Mass Media Complete database.

This article, which is adapted from Joy Cameron-Dow’s (now a professor at Bond University) PhD thesis, discusses the issue of the right to privacy in crime stories that are now published online through news outlets. Because the Web offers unlimited space, reporters can cover crime stories more extensively, sometimes at the cost of the people on trial. Cameron-Dow mentions how the change in format from newspapers to the Internet has allowed for journalists to write more and add multimedia effects to stories that would otherwise be limited to a couple inches in a newspaper column. Included in those multimedia effects is the ability to hyperlink to outside sources, a technique that journalists use and that is now making it easier for readers to follow the crime trail into dimensions not seen before. And in this era of social networking, in which people can put up personal information and photos on Facebook and MySpace, it is easier for a reader to be able to track down information about criminals after they’ve been convicted–which would be considered a breach of the right to privacy as criminals should be left alone after the trial ends, Cameron-Dow argues. Cameron-Dow also mentions the paparazzi and how they invade the privacy of celebrities and public figures. In this case, they will follow famous faces who are charged of crimes (such as OJ Simpson), but they will also make otherwise ordinary people into celebrities because of their roles in crime (such as the JonBenet Ramsey family and Scott Peterson). Not only are cameras and audio recorders following all of these people and invading their privacy, but they are also impeding on the right to a fair trial, Cameron-Dow says. With all of the media coverage of the trials, it is becoming more and more difficult for jurors to go into a trial without a bias–and is leading to more judges removing jurors from trials because they cannot give a fair trial. All of this is linked back to the Internet and its impact on journalism: The Internet gives news outlets more space and the ability to use multimedia to give essentially unlimited access to all different angles to these trials.

When the right to privacy is discussed in conjunction with the Internet, the first thoughts evoked are usually of teenagers disclosing too much personal information on social networking sites. But the right to privacy has been a topic of discussion in newsrooms as well and is written into codes of ethics, and Cameron-Dow’s article looks at this ongoing debate in a new light. There’s been the idea of preventing harm and protecting privacy in journalism; when at all possible, under the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, reporters should avoid infringing on the public’s right to privacy. But when does the right to privacy top the public’s right to know? This is an interesting balance that journalists have to rethink now as a result of the Internet. Cameron-Dow takes the position that the right to privacy is taking too much of a back seat to the right to know because of the effect it is having on the crime beat. And while it is true that those charged–and convicted–with crimes deserve privacy, and journalists should do what they can to protect their rights to a fair trial, reporters are still responsible for finding stories and digging up buried information. It is always possible that a journalist might find information that is crucial to a conviction. Journalists use public records and the Freedom of Information Act so that they can find stories that need to be told; if journalists were to stop FOIA requests in order to focus more on the right to privacy, stories would go untold, and criminals would continue to walk free. Look at the discussion on the Pentagon Papers and their impact on Watergate; it lead to the resignation of a president because of what the government was trying to hide. If reporters suddenly chose to respect the right to privacy over the right to know 100 percent of the time, stories such as that would possibly never come out. As for the Internet’s role in this discussion, the public does not need a link from a news story to find out facts about criminals. Anyone can use Google to find all sorts of information about just about anyone; in that case, it is not the journalist to blame for privacy taking a back seat. Have journalists gone too far in covering stories? (This is where the paparazzi issue comes into place.) Absolutey, but most journalists for established and credible outlets know the fine line between knowing too much and not exposing enough.

The Technological Impact.

Pavlik, J. (2000). The impact of technology on journalism. Journalism Studies, p229-237. Retrieved from Sage Database.

The impact of technology on the field of journalism has been great, John V. Pavlik says, professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the School of Communication and Information for Rutgers University. Since the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press and Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, the spread of literacy has enabled widespread communication. Pavlik argues that along with technology bringing about the advent of journalism, technology has fundamentally changed journalism in four distinct ways. Technology has changed the way journalists do their job, the nature of news content, the structure of the news industry, and the nature of relationships between news organizations (convergence). Pavlik says, “Although the best reporting is, and always has been, so-called ‘shoe-leather’ reporting, or news-gathering when the journalist is on the scene, more and more journalists spend increasingly less of their time out in the field observing directly the events and processes on which they report.” Pavlik attributes this shift in technique to the ability to conduct interviews over the phone and even through emails. Reporting during non-business hours has also been made possible through websites and various blogging sites. Pavlik sites a case study detailing the before and after effects of the use of video for news broadcasts. Before networks used video, narrative as slowly paced and reports  had fewer camera shots. After networks began to use video in their broadcasts, edits became fast paced, the narrative was quickened and camera shots were shortened. Now the internet is changing the landscape again, Pavlik argues. News can reach anyone and anywhere in a matter of seconds which can influence everything from what to wear and when to sell your stocks. Changes in technology are greatly influencing how the news industry is structured. National news organizations are growing in size but decreasing in profitability while local organizations are decreasing in size and profitability. Pavlik argues that this is actually good for the consumer because now they have thousands of choices of where they can get their news with so many organizations competing in the same space online. This has led to a converged newsroom where stories are assigned to a reporter who gathers all the necessary info which is then packaged for distribution to any media outlet (television, radio, newspaper, internet). The nature of relationships between news organizations and the public was relatively unchanged for almost 500 years since the Gutenberg printing press, Pavlik argues. The traditional relationship was broadcast; news from few to the many. Now the internet has enabled a two-way flow of information from the few to the many and vice-versa. Pavlik says, “The advent of the digital, networked world of communication is fundamentally altering these models of twentieth-century journalism. No longer can most journalists and editors be content merely to publish the news. Instead, the process is becoming much more of a dialog between the press and the public.”

Pavlik makes several good points for this new era of journalism. He points out that the face of journalism and its function has been an ever-changing since Julius Caesar first published the Acta Diurna in 59 A.D. Since then, various inventions and forms of literature have emerged to push journalism into its current state. We are now simply witnessing the next phase change of journalism from past to future and all the turmoil that comes with it. Current forms will go by the wayside and new forms will take their place until the next big change comes upon us. While technology is changing how news is being delivered, it is also changing the form of the news. Pavlik describes this trend towards an interactive dialog between organizations and the masses rather than the one-way news street by saying, “Digital technology is also transforming the nature of storytelling and the presentation of news online. The once basic inverted pyramid news-writing style is becoming obsolete in the online news world. It is being supplanted increasingly by immersive and interactive multimedia news reports that can give readers/viewers a feeling of presence at news events like never before.” Journalism as we knew it is nearing the final stages. The need for quality storytelling and news-gathering will remain but the media’s monopoly on news is quickly fading into a much more interactive and engaging form of journalism where its readership will have a voice and an ability to supplement the news for a more enriching news experience.