News-Record.com

Dear Mr. Alexander, Planning to bring children into the new age of jounalism is a fine and worthy undertaking. But, we have to first teach them to read and write, and I am afraid the schools today are sadly failing to do that. We need to go back to teaching the basics only in elementary schools, or said another way, we need to go back to the 1950's and before. Sort of a Back to the Future idea. Outrageous suggestion isn't it? What in the world would the school administrations do with all these high priced specialist if all they really need are good teachers? Sincerely, Brenda Bowers

Brenda: I quite agree that elementary education in basic subjects needs to be more rigorous. That said, I would define "the basics" to include music, art, physical education and at least one foreign language, not to mention basic computer skills. Not everyone is on board with that. :-)

A general thread that seems to run through your linked blog post at CMA (from above) and through the News & Record site in general is that people are still getting confused about what is citizen journalism and what is new media. Certainly neither are really profitable for newspapers--which is a general trend among all online media.

But, blogging, while it offers transparency and some sense of interactivity, is not interesting to a lot of young people. Quite frankly, and sadly, a lot of young people don't care about reading a blog about something going on a town hall. However, the concept of interactivity goes beyond just blogging--it often seems that to young people that blogs on a newspaper site is just a way for the newspaper to add transparency for the paper's sake, not for the transpareny of the news.

It's great that the News & Record has blogs--and I skim them often. But, what about the interactive graphics, the hard hitting audio interviews and the alternative story forms on your site. Though some of them are really interesting, why aren't the containers that hold the projects built with advertisements splash pages? In an age where younger audiences are willing to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on video games, why isn't the News & Record trying to model an interactive portion of their site (even accessible by a small fee) that caters to this younger audience?

As a multimedia major at UNC-CH, I'd suggest that a major setback of the media industry today is the people who are currently working in the industry. They are afraid of change. They are afraid that a new and younger generation of journalists are going to change the system with all this technology so fast that they won't have jobs because they aren't experienced in 3d software or object oriented programming to drive high quality Flash presentations. I'm don't think it's really a matter of the ideas of college journalists not being adequate--I think it's a matter of an old fashioned system that is led by leaders afraid to do something they aren't trained to do, or don't really understand.

Thanks for your comment, Feilding. Coupla points:

-- Online is profitable for us and has been for some time. I'm not at liberty to divulge figures (and don't have access to all of them), but let's just say the ones I HAVE seen are ... encouraging.

-- Our online folks are "old-fashioned" only in the sense that some of those most responsible for its day-to-day look and feel have been doing this since we first staffed our site in 1996.

-- That said, our News folks are not as well-trained and -equipped as we'd like. The financial investment we'd need to really push these skills across the News Department hasn't come ... yet. To that extent, no, we don't really "understand," but that's not the same as being unwilling to learn. Indeed, we're far more afraid of sticking with the status quo (and continuing to hemorrhage readership) than of change. But right now, we've got a whopping three or four digital audio recorders in the newsroom, no video camera of our own (we have to borrow one from the tech folks across the hall), etc. It's not that we don't want to put up more audio, etc. -- it's that we can't.

Also, you ask, "Why aren't the containers that hold the projects built with advertisements splash pages?" Help me understand: What's the thinking here? You seem to imply with the next sentence that ad splash pages look similar to video games and therefore would be more attractive to younger readers. (And if I've misunderstood, by all means, please set me straight.) But some readers of varying ages have told us splash ads annoy them. Do the people who like them outnumber the people they annoy?

I'd also welcome, here or privately via e-mail, any specific suggestions you'd like to make for improving the site.

Thanks!