"Romenesko roadkill"
I just got back from Chapel Hill where I served on an SPJ panel in an afternoon long "jam session for journalists." And it was that. Run by SPJ president Christine Tatum, a former News & Record reporter, it was less a panel and more of a roundtable discussion of 50 people.
My panel's topic was "to explain how journalists might use the Web to connect with the public they serve."
I planned to say if desperation is the mother of invention, then after hearing Phil Meyer's opening talk, everyone should understand that we're desperate and it's time to invent. I figured that would get a laugh.
I then planned to say that it is truly a wonderful time to be a journalist because with all the new digital tools:
* We can reach more people with our journalism in so many different ways.
* With so many ways to hear people, there are more sources, more fact-checkers, more critics and more reporters in non-traditional guise.
* There's more diversity. If we truly believe the cliches about shining light into dark corners and giving voice to the voiceless, you've got to love all the tools that are available not only to journalists but to everyone.
* With news as such a commodity, we should have more time to pursue unique stories that matter to our communities.
And that our ultimate charge -- to produce compelling, truth-telling content that makes a difference -- is within everyone's power. It doesn't matter if it's online or print, words or video. Do that and people will find you wherever you are.
I only got to say some of that because the conversation was so robust and dynamic, which is to be expected with a room full of journalists.
Some of the discussion was the usual -- How do your reporters find time to use all the new tools you're pushing on them, for instance. Some was provocative -- How do you make tomorrow's paper fresh when the big news has been at saturation coverage on cable? (My answer: Not this way.)
But we only skimmed the core issue.Much of the discussion centered around getting people to come to our Web sites, either by giving them more depth of information or through intense up-to-the-minute breaking news coverage. That, of course, is only part of the revolution. While I never referred to "the people formerly known as the audience," I did paraphrase either Jarvis or Winer as saying something like, "Once the users get control, they're never going to give it back."* That got a laugh, which I tried not to let overrun my larger point: the audience has the control. We're all swimmers in the same big ocean producing compelling news stories. Swimming against that tide is not only bad for your health; it's bad for your journalism. It's well-documented that "citizen journalists" armed with cell phone cameras brought back the best images of the London bombings and the Va. Tech shooting, and I didn't even go into all the powerfully blogged stories. The days of us being the beach's admission stand are over. The days of being the ocean's lifeguard are quickly coming to an end, too. Our challenge is to swim with everyone else and do whatever we can to help.
The biggest laugh I got was after Rod Overton, who was one of our early online editors and has worked as the online honcho in Miami and is now in Charleston, was asked what he wanted to get out of the session. He said he didn't want to become one of the "out of touch muckety-mucks" in the executive suite or become "Romenesko roadkill." An hour later, when I was asked to introduce myself to the group, I said I was qualified to help Rod because I am one of those out of touch muckety mucks, and I havw been Romenesko roadkill.
* After a quick search, I see it was Winer and he said, "Once the users take control, they never give it back."