Just curious if can serve as a model for your studies.

Whiteboard definitions:
Continuous; 24/7 hour
Credible
Risky. Composed of risk-takers. Stretching the limits of technology, content and money.
Willing to embrace and seek failure.
Willing to see the union as a partner.
Interactive. Gives voice to the readers.
Realizes that journalism is not always a story. It might be a database.
Multiplatform, including a free print edition. Multimedia; offering different platorms for different audiences.
Not a one-way street. Not print into multimedia—both ways
Ethical
Transparent.
Allows reporters to express what they think and feel.
A watchdog of the eternal spin machine. Please, of state government.
Committed to freedom of information.
Financially viable And generous with the money it makes.
Supports the acts of journalism.
PERSONAL. Facilitates actual human interaction.
Distributed widely – transit
Devoted to Media literacy – not how to use the media, how to BE the media.
Should empower its users to be citizens
Has a voice. Have a personality.
Enables the community to inform each other.
May offer layers of journalism: Old-school, trained journalism; community journalism
Uses a new metric for measuring success. Should enjoy first-amendment protection

Some religious issues, politics, Green Peace, and
the National Rifle Association come to mind. The real problem is we can’t get past our own limitations and ignorance.

Part of this challenge generally is akin to a singer
finding their own voice.

Being a journalist is far more complex than knowing how to use a keyboard, or being able to
be a ’so-called’ witness to events.

This runs parallel to a concept ‘professional
photographers’ understand and others don’t. Taking a photograph doesn’t equate to “being
a photograper” in the strictest sense.

I’m sure the Dalia Lama could provide eloquent insight using a similar metaphor regarding spirituality.

Excellence in any field is perhaps rare. There
are likely just as many mediocre “over-paid mechanic” physicians as there are average journalists - I’m sure. But, like excellence in the arts, an insightful journalist can make words burn or sooth at will.

Perhaps the difference is doctors have somewhat of a curtain to hide behind, and by comparison
journalism is somewhat naked. However, let us not be so naive as to believe any individual on a stage is an actor.

Generally speaking, advertising follows
excellence, as well as circulation. Journalistically wallowing in a political gutter and slanting coverage leads first to a loss of credibility, then failure. At least this is true for the audience of individuals with a moderate IQ.

For example, do you really think Rush Limbaugh believes everything he says? Or, is it possible he just created a “character” to take material advantage of persons of a particular bent? How
different are much of the events we all bear witness to from ‘McCarthyism’ of the 1950s.

Flood waters recede. Soon also will this ‘Twilight
Zone’ era of masquerade and mediocrity. Revolution in thought may be dancing around any corner. When that time comes there may be screaming in the cheap seats.

– ADM

All that being said, I have neither the expertise nor the means to do this. It’s just an idea. I’d wager there are many communities like mine.

Further, I still appreciate having the text on paper, in my hands, portable, and non-electric. We lose power frequently where I live. The unplugged population is still huge–how would you get to them? What if there’s a huge power blackout? How to woo those whose only contact with a computer may be a video game?

Cart before horse, I realize…

It means capitalism is functioning.

Look where people can’t lose their job: France, Congress, Supreme Court, American car companies (until recently), public school teachers (only 2 fired out of 80,000 in nyc over the last 2 yrs), etc.

Technology disrupts careers every single day, why should journalists be exempt?

As much as I object to MSM and its long list of problems, I also hate to see a lot of people losing their jobs or failing to find any work out of journalism school.

Fortunately, it’s no skin off my teeth regardless of what the MSM decides to do. I no longer rely on them to get the news.

If you look at the United States, people move much more now than ever - a trend that is unlikely to reverse or even slow. Personally I have lived in four cities in the last 5 years (and I am hellbent on leaving Boston now). The country has been moving toward a national culture and away from a parochial one. I know I couldn’t give a sh*t about local news here. I caught a minute of it the other day and the story they were on was about a Harvard kid mooning someone. Seriously.

I suspect that the people interested in local events are the ones who have lived in an area their entire lives. Unfortunately for the daydreamers, this is a shrinking demographic as well. Even worse, I think these are the only people that buy papers now.

Focusing on local events is not only a needless surrender on global and national ones, it is a pathetic clinging to existing customers. And it is far from a pro-growth strategy.

Like I said before, just about all of their ideas amount to tinkering with a fundamentally flawed business model.

The beauty of the blogosphere is not only that it’s killing the papers, but that it also provides a front row seat to view the carnage.

Last I read and heard, local news typically includes national and global news coverage as well. My local lefty paper and local networks are just as guilty of the failings I listed as is the NYT. The UNC incident, for example, is local news that the rest of us should be made aware of at both the local And national level. And if town councils AREN’T concerned with the very real threats and news regarding sharia then they should be. They are our primary responders in the WOT.

I included numerous topics and failings which apply to journalism across the board. Your description of the conference certainly wasn’t restricted to local issues; to wit, your intro: “I’m in Philly at the Annenberg School of Communication for the Norg unconference: A remarkable, perhaps historic, gathering of newspaper people and bloggers starting a conversation about saving news.”

Excuse the hell out of me for addressing precisely that topic.

CaptiousNut is right on all counts. I have never read or heard about any media confab, conference or unconference in which an honest assessment of “fundamental” flaws and failings is made. Why ARE readers and viewers *really* tuning the MSM out? Far be it for me to state the obvious and use current examples to illustrate, I suppose.

The *reality pill* so many will be forced to swallow as a result of this myopia And MO is sad indeed. As you said, Jeff, it’s not clear that those students will be able to even find jobs or earn a living in their chosen profession. And as long as the club continues to not only ignore its fundamental problems but also foster and encourage its editorialized, fictionalized, agenda driven and politicized ‘news’ reporting, I’m quite certain you’re right.

The idea of a “norg” as a coop. I think of that as a coop of news gatherers and sharers (e.g., the coop sells your ads and promotes you but you still own what you do: your reporting and content).

This is a model that appears to be working pretty well for the fledgling webcomic industry - see Blank Label Comics for an example. I don’t know how well it’ll scale, but so far so good.

Jeff, thanks for the links!

No, they continually skate around that problem. But that fits in with their modus operandi quite well.

Remember these are the people who look at fundamentally flawed problems and only want to tinker with the current failing solutions.

Somehow the layoffs will end, the audiences will come back, and their credibility will return if only they have the courage to …..

…..eliminate the stock tables.

We had 8-tracks, vinyl and CDs. Now we have MP3s. Most stockbrokers and travel agents are dinosaurs. Rocketboom now has 300K daily viewers and there are 1.2 million blog posts every day. The recent sale of Knight Ridder to McClatchyhe should worry the entire publishing industry, if they weren’t already concerned about the state of their declining business. It has been a horrible year for the newspaper business, in particular, but should that come as a surprise to anyone? Even Rupert Murdoch seems to know better these days.

~ Declining circulation (-3%)
~ Declining revenue (circ. revenue -7% at the Tribune)
~ Profit margins down 1.5%, to just below 20%
~ Classified ad revenue is drying up
~ Worsening mix of circulation to advertising revenue
~ Falling stock prices (-20% on Wall Street)
~ Mature industry
~ Job losses
~ No archival value of product
~ And you still get ink all over your hands when you read ‘em

The sad thing for many publishers and other dinosaurs, is that this story is only news to them.

It is always nice to see ASC encouraging conversation and a good debate. I was a graduate fellow there, and the school has always been good about that. If you’re at UPenn, however, I think the best thinking on the issue is coming out of Wharton. See: Are Newspapers Yesterday’s News?

Hope you’re well,
~G~