Tablets, e-readers and content, oh my!

This should be a big week (and maybe month) for new reading/watching technology.

At least two new e-readers will be announced to compete with Amazon's Kindle, Barnes and Noble's Nook and Sony's Reader at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. 

Plastic Logic is introducing the long-awaited Que. The Skiff will be sold (and wired) by Sprint with content cooperation from Hearst Corp. Both are billed as larger and sleeker than the other e-readers, with touchscreens.


Meanwhile, Apple plans an announcement later this month that many believe will be a new tablet computer that will include a touchscreen and video. As David Carr mentions in his New York Times column today, Microsoft and HTC also appear to be developing tablets. But Freescale apparently will get there first this week with its $200 tablet device.


Ironically, back in the early and mid-90s, the late newspaper company Knight-Ridder funded a Boulder laboratory that predicted the tablet and its use for news (check out the vid above! priceless!). The technology just wasn't there at the time.


Now, the technology is beyond what Knight-Ridder imagined - millions interact with friends known and unknown via facebook, twitter, etc. We post and view videos on everything from guitar instruction to humor on youtube. The ability of consumers to create their own product now competes with newsrooms, which once experienced a bit of a content monopoly. The music moguls, too, suffered when Apple's iPod and iTunes took over.


David Bennahum tweeted yesterday that the new technology may threaten television most of all. He makes a great point, as does Bono in his Sunday Times op-ed, where he questions whether consumers will be willing to continue paying for video content as it becomes more easily downloadable.

Meanwhile, advertising remains a question in the world of media. Warren Berger posits that the era of advertising is ending in his great book on design, Glimmer. Instead, businesses are looking for ways to interact with consumers, instead of simply broadcast one-way messages to them.



What does all this mean for content and content producers? 


One of my questions as a journalist and one interesting in politics is this: Who will provide content that brings community together instead of polarizing different sides, that answers difficult, complex questions, that points out potentially unpopular concepts/ideas? 


Other questions: Are consumers willing to settle for mediocre content as long as it's free? Will creators be willing to produce quality content for free or for goodwill offerings?



As always, i don't have answers. Just questions i'm mulling.

Finding a Job: Some tactics that worked

Back to some posts on finding a job - tho i'm happy to learn that several former students and current friends have been successful in landing various cool gigs in recent weeks!

First two words, OK, three or four: Be positive and proactive! Keep going, even in the face of rejection (and when hundreds of folks apply for a job, there's a lot of that out there).

For those still looking and even for those who just landed, here are some proactive tactics that worked for me and others i know. Feel free to add more in the comments!

Offer to stop by for a chat! Whether you've applied for a job that's advertised or you're targeting a company you want to work for, after you've sent your resume and work samples, call them up and ask if you can stop in for coffee. The worst they can say is no thanks. But oftentimes, they'll say sure. My interviews in Jacksonville and Orlando resulted from me calling the hiring editor (not the recruiter), saying, "Hey, i'll be in town on (day here), can i stop by and chat?" OK, the real reason i was coming to town was to chat with them! But it worked! Each time, i ended up with a day of interviews, and, eventually, great jobs!

Followup! A few years ago, i was hiring for two presentation desk jobs. One Friday afternoon, i picked up the phone and it was one of the applicants i'd set aside. He asked what was up with the process and i told him that it seemed to me he was working at a considerably larger newspaper and we couldn't really afford him. He told me that he'd be moving to Boulder and if he didn't work for me, he'd be working at a restaurant - and that it was possible that we could afford him. i'm glad he called - he's a great guy, wonderful to work with!

Really, followup! Most jobs being advertised in the Denver/Boulder area are receiving up to 300 applicants. i'm told of a recent job search in which the hiring manager was overwhelmed - and apparently ended up hiring the person (with considerable experience) who called the day before the manager was scheduled for vacation. Fair to the other hundreds of applicants? Maybe not. But it worked for the successful applicant.

Use your contacts! From LinkedIn to Facebook friends, from college profs to fellow students or coworkers, figure out if you know people in the company or region where you're looking for work. Can someone send an e-mail extolling your virtues to the hiring manager (i often will, for what it's worth)? Can a friend refer you to a contact who can answer your questions and give you some beta before an interview - or before sending the cover letter/resume/clips?

Do your homework! Before you interview, check out the company and the people you're interviewing with. Do your Web research, ask your contacts for info. A friend who interviewed one of my grad students noted that even tho he didn't have an internship for her, she knew a ton about his agency and even about him.

Be prepared for the interview questions - and prepare your own! A friend says he recently blanked when asked in an interview "Tell us about yourself." That's why it's important to prepare your answers to potential questions as i mentioned in a previous post. And come prepared with questions of your own about the job and the company.

Always be on the lookout! One of my friends at the Sentinel told me that she was always looking for the next job - and the one after that. She kept in contact with friends at other publications, with former editors and college profs, so when there was an opening she'd be interested in, she'd know. She ended up at BusinessWeek in D.C. after Orlando.

Next time, i'll share some bad examples - don't try this in your career!

Something that'll ruin your prospects

Each semester, in every class, i include a segment on syllabi that outlines what plagiarism is, why it is wrong and what the consequences are - in my class, at the university and, most importantly, in the real world. i talk about it in class and offer up examples of how people have made this deadly sin and what happened to them.

Still, each year, i find an instance or two when students lift from a Web site. They often seem confused when we discuss it, as if no one ever told them it was wrong.

i suspect these students think i'm being mean, harsh, a total bitch. Well, it's far worse in the real world. And here's the latest example.

A summer intern at the Gazette in Colorado Springs was found to have copied paragraphs in four stories from the past month. It's bad enough that she's lost her job (as she should).

But in this day and age, she's also been prominently featured on Gawker (complete with photo and quotes from past blog posts) and on Romenesko, one of the most highly trafficked sites for journalists.

Soon, those will be the top hits for this woman on a Google search, if they aren't already. Any employer looking at her will learn about this incident.

Let that be a lesson to you!

The left and right continue to gloat...

Let's see.

Rush Limbaugh says liberal bias caused the Rocky Mountain News to fail. Gee, Vince Carroll, what would you have to say about that?

Then Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Polis says it's the progressive (aka liberal) blogosphere responsible for the newspaper's demise.

Each of these - and plenty more out there in the blogosphere - would love nothing better than to preach only to the choir, presenting only their version of the world.

Believe me, i know. i once served as a consultant to a political news Web site funded in part by Polis. The idea was to pay bloggers to report and write more like journalists. But when it came right down to it, there was some news that wasn't news. Like when a Polis staffer/blogger slammed his two 2nd Congressional District opponents and was forced to resign. The managing editor for the site refused to allow a post on this subject for most of a day because, as she told me, A) Polis helped fund the site and B) the staffer in question was a friend of hers and C) Polis had paid to send the ME, the Polis staffer and others to Yearly Kos (aka Netroots Nation) the weekend before. After much debate among the staff, ME wrote her own brief post (after midnight).

And i resigned from the site. Because i didn't want to work for a political campaign. i wanted to work for a news site. And suppressing or ignoring the news isn't what journalism is about.

Sites from the other political perspective also report some stories and ignore others.

But preaching only to the choir certainly helps the cause of folks like Limbaugh and Polis. If traditional journalists aren't around (in print or on the Web) to offer complete stories, featuring all sides, all the better for the idealogues.

Citizens, too, need to understand that they're not always getting the complete picture from some - and they need to seek out the truth from less self-serving sources than Rush and Jared.

Some Rocky links with which to ROCK ON!

We definitely ROCK ON here.

And for you baseball buffs wanting more on your Rockies, Inside the Rockies is the place for you.

Meanwhile, former Rockster Jonathon Berlin writes about what he learned at the Rocky, design-wise.

i want my Rocky!

Journalism is essential to inform citizens and keep our democracy alive.

Every semester, that's what I emphasize to my journalism students at the University of Colorado. It certainly isn't an original thought - it's a premise that's been around since the founding of this country or before.

And it's what I believe.

It's also one of the reasons I'm proud to work at the Rocky - even if it's only once or twice a week editing copy and writing headlines, which I've been doing since June of this year. Before going to CU as a journalism instructor, I worked for Scripps at the Camera in Boulder, where I was a reporter and editor for 11 years. Before that I worked at newspapers in Iowa and Florida.

Clearly, the Web has revolutionized how we get news. There's video, audio, wonderful photos and, most of all, up-to-the minute reports of key happenings. Readers can now have conversations with each other - and with journalists - on message and comment boards. And non-journalists can get in on reporting the news, too. Certainly the recent DIA plane crash, in which a passenger twittered the crash, is a great example of that last feature.

Another advantage is that readers can seek out what they're interested in. I'm a huge advocate of that. The more information we can find about a topic, the better our decisions will be.

But one reason I love newspapers - and especially the Rocky - is the surprises I can find in the news I might not seek out on my own. How many of us would have searched the Web for a story such as "Final Salute," the moving story of families being notified of the war deaths of their loved ones? Who out there on the Internet pressed federal officials, dug throug documents and tracked down former Rocky Flats nuclear plant workers to report on feds' failure to compensate the workers for their health problems? Rocky reporter Laura Frank did just that in her series "Deadly Denial."

I could cite many more great examples - Drew Litton's great sports cartoons, the excellent political coverage from M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Lynn Bartels and Ed Sealover, and the great workouts from Lisa Ryckman, just to name a few.

Then there are the different viewpoints - something we don't often seek out on the Internet. From Tina Griego's reports on Border Street and rebuilding Windsor to Vincent Carroll's incisive editorial columns.

When we seek out only what we want to know or hear, we miss out on valuable information that can inform the decisions we make in our democracy - or information that also entertains, amuses or even enrages us.

Without a broad, well-rounded publication like the Rocky, readers may get what they want from the Web but they probably won't get what they need.

Cross-posted from http://www.iwantmyrocky.com/.

And the right cheers...

As the news industry implodes (and make that 2,000 Gannett employees out of work) there seems to be a common thread in the comments on the stories i've seen.

It popped up first yesterday, when i checked the Tallahassee Democrat, where my former co-worker Bruce Ritchie lost his job. The comments on that story are highly political - and even racist.

From Nascardad:

"Yep, now everyone knows that the left-wing media is just a, could it be, just a big corporate entity. As much as they whine and cry about other corporations, they are just as heartless. Is your CEO going to work for one dollar this year? Didn't think so. Hope you die."

Then there's this, probably the worst:

"All they do is lament and complain and be suggestive and parley their race into not being CUT! I guess when the business manager has a name of Africa you can be sure you are stayin!"

The theme continued at the Gannett-owned Des Moines Register:

"This has more to do with the growing liberal slant/rants of the editorial staff than a troubled economy."

And when the Rocky Mountain News ran a story that its corporate parent, Scripps, was selling the Denver newspaper, more of the same:

"Liberal drivel finally caught up with ya, huh?"

And:

"They just don't get it. Liberalism in the media and a liberal biased media loses every time. I got so tired of the junk and trash they were calling reporting I also canceled my subscription."

You gotta wonder about these folks. Where will they/do they get their news? And where will they post these comments when these news sites go away?

In defense of the desk.

Everyone needs editing.

But copy or presentation desks seem to be one area where publishers are looking to cut back. At my last full-time newspaper job, a former co-worker recently recalled, three of us often put out 30 pages of copy on a Saturday - that's three people to choose wire, design pages, edit copy and write headlines. That presentation desk is even smaller since i left, tho in fairness, so is the print edition of the newspaper.

Now some publishers are talking about getting rid of that function altogether or shipping it offshore.

That would be a mistake. Because everyone needs editing.

As an example, i'd cite my most recent published "charticle" in which a grad student found a wording issue (and actually, i found and corrected a second one while looking through it at work). In my part-time gig on the copy desk at the Rocky Mountain News, i routinely find misspelled words, names spelled a couple of different ways and the occasional errant field goal in the wrong direction.

That said, the role of copy/presentation desks does need to change. Editors need to be able to do everything, rather than specialize in design or writing heds. Just like reporters must shoot video, blog and twitter, editors need to be able to edit and upload breaking news quickly for the Web, design some print pages and carefully read the longer investigative piece.

Steve Outing makes that point effectively in today's E&P column. Just as the rest of the news biz is changing, so is editing. That doesn't make editing any less important.

But those resisting the changes - especially the movement to doing more work on the Web - will be left behind.

The new, new, new (but maybe a bit old) journalism

When i interviewed for a job at the Daily Camera almost 16 years ago, the editor asked me to come for the second day prepared to talk about "radical change." The heat was on from corporate execs at the late, great Knight-Ridder.

So i did what any good journalist should do. I looked up radical in the dictionary. Here's the first entry:

Of or from the root or roots; going to the foundation or source of something; fundamental; basic.

These days, i look to Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel and their book the Elements of Journalism to define those roots and fundamentals. Their principles:

• Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.
• Its first loyalty is to citizens.
• Its essence is a discipline of verification.
• Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
• It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
• It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
• It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.
• It must keep the news comprehensive and in proportion.
• Its practitioners have an obligation to exercise their personal conscience.
• Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news.

Certainly the explosion of information on the Internet has created a dilemma for those practicing journalism, especially those at newspapers. Craigslist and others continue to erode the advertising base that provided the revenue stream for the business model. And there are tons of other media outlets competing for the news audience.

So how does journalism get back to the basics while competing in constantly changing landscape and platform?

Here are some examples i really like:

Graham Watson. Last week this young woman came to talk to my Principles of Journalism class - she's only a few years older than the students. She's worked on sports desks at the Dallas Morning News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; at the latter she started blogging about her beat, the Missouri Tigers. But earlier this year, she took a job as one of 15 bloggers for ESPN. She writes about non-BCS football teams (that's a ton o' teams!) and has done more than 1,900 posts since August (she wrote one in the car on the way to our class - yes, someone else was driving). Since ESPN is truly multimedia, she's also been on radio and even spent a Saturday in the TV studio last month. Yep, she's working her tail off now, but when the bowl games are done she'll have plenty of free time til spring practice, along with enough airline miles and hotel points for a sweet retreat!

Brian Crecente. Yep, he used to be a cops reporter at the Rocky Mountain News, then moved over to features to write about his real love, video gaming. Somewhere along the way, he started a Web site on video gaming. And when the News did some heavy cutbacks a year or so ago and wanted to move him back to metro, well, he had other ways to make a living at Kotaku. The site is owned by Gawker Media and is wildly popular. He still freelances gaming stories for the Rocky sometimes, tho.

Nate Silver. OK, this guy has never claimed to be a journalist - he's a numbers cruncher, bean counter, statistician, baseball geek. But when he decided to start analyzing political polls and created FiveThirtyEight earlier this year, he provided a service that the public was clearly starving for. He ended up all over the media, and Silver & team are planning a life after the election, probably covering the new administration.

Could a newspaper Web site have created something like FiveThirtyEight? Sure - and there are plenty of journalists out there with an eye for numbers and data analysis. But i'm not sure newspapers are willing to go that basic - or micro. Silver's site employs basically three people (one of them a photographer!). In today's pared down newsrooms, it's rare to see three people devoted to a single mission full-time (unless it's in sports).

But i'd argue that newsrooms would gain audiences by homing in on micro-topics that are relevant and interesting to their readers - getting back to the basics of providing, interpreting and analyzing detailed information about government and the world as a public service to the viewers and readers. Using the Internet allows journalists to do an even better job of providing information to the public than words, graphics and pictures on a printed page can do.

Tomorrow, or later today, i'll offer up an example of one subject i'd tackle if i were a Colorado newspaper editor and how i'd go about it.

Ah, the scandal!

Sometimes i really do miss working in Florida. It may well be the best place on Earth to be a journalist. If you dig exposing the scandal and corruption, that is!

Take this recent turn of events in Orlando, my old stomping grounds. The short take: A long-time anti-tax advocate turns out to be on the take, getting paid by an expressway authority, a development attorney and others to lay off - at least that's what the stories say and the DA there is investigating.

Colorado equivalents? It'd be like Jon Caldara taking a few hundred thou from the RTD to keep his mouth shut on the transit agency's latest tax-and-spend scheme. Just wouldn't be happening. (At least i don't think so!!!) It'd be like Dan Caplis taking cash from Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy to stop talking about JonBenet and the Midyette case. Again, not happening.

Not sure what it is about Florida that makes people think it's a great idea to pay people off or extort cash from their opposition. But it sure makes good news stories.