Choosing Between Apps and Journalism?

A fascinating discussion have been launched by the Washington Post ombudsman, Patrick Pexton.

Patrick has lamented (in a very sophisticated way) the rapid introduction of new apps on his newspaper's website. He claims that the blur of technological advances is leaving many Washington Post readers behind and worse, simply confused by the onslaught of new ways of consuming media.

Not surprisingly, this has provoked an outpouring of high dudgeon from the more tech-savvy
early adapters many of whom work for the Washington Post online and for other newspapers.

Patrick explained what he meant in a further discussion here.

In summary, he is not opposed to innovation. Only to the inability of the Post's website to make all the bells and whistles work effectively.

I think Patrick raises an important point (and appropriately so for an Ombudsman) whose job it is to give voice to the paper's increasingly frustrated online readers (myself included).

News websites can be models of clarity and concision. Too often they are not. Instead, they are a jumble of stories and connected apps that seem to be engaged in a mutual battle for limited space on a space viewing area, but without a compelling editorial reason.

A newspaper's core readership is older and I assume a bit less adept than a 20-something in how to intuitively handle the flow of information. Patrick provided a real service to that audience by simply asking if the cyber-innovations are more to demonstrate the cleverness of the online staff, than to meet the audience where it is, in order to give them a more helpful reading experience.

Some days, news websites feel more like high tech trade shows than a place to be informed.

On the other hand, NPR has now produced an amazing app for your car radio in collaboration with Ford. All you have to do (it seems) is tell the radio verbally what you want to hear and voilà - you are listening to your favorite radio show or your preferred live stream from any number of public radio stations around the US.

It looks (and sounds) amazingly easy. As long as drivers don't get distracted with the range of choices. But Internet radio in your car is coming to a dealership near you - and soon.

Lessons Learned from Teaching Freshmen Journalism

It's the end of term and I've finished teaching two courses for first year students in journalism at the University of Toronto.

This has been a new experience for all of us. The students are just out of high school and eager to get into the journalistic culture. I've never taught freshmen (always referred to as "First Year" in Canada) before. Prior to this, my teaching has been at the graduate level or senior year. I'll admit to a few surprises from these students.

I expected that they would be voracious consumers of news. They aren't.

I assumed they would be cyber-literate. They aren't. They consume only some aspects of new media, but not a lot of it. Astonishingly, they don't read email. Or if they do, they check it infrequently. They do text. A lot. They send SMS, and are addicted to tweets and facebook friends.

I hoped they would show some flair for writing. Here, I was not disappointed. Some of these students are going to be literary stars.

But they remain disconnected from the daily news. I could not figure out why.

On campus, the Toronto Star is distributed daily. Yet, the piles of newspapers outside the food courts remain virtually untouched on a day-to-day basis. When I would urge my students to pick up a copy and look through the paper, they would not.

Nor do they listen or watch mainstream radio and television either on line or over the air.

Even so, they remain convinced that a journalistic life is what they want.

After a number of weeks of trying to figure them out, it hit me: I was perusing the Star, just before going into class. I suddenly saw the newspaper with the eyes of my students: while the Toronto Star is a great, content rich newspaper for people like me, for an 18-year old student, it's chaotic, gray, ugly. In short, it's a mess. Worse, it makes no sense to them.

In class, I asked the students if they knew how to read a newspaper. They were somewhat miffed by this, so I rephrased it: " Do you know HOW to read a newspaper?" They admitted that they did not.

They confessed they had no idea why something was on the front page, why a reporter could be writing an op-ed one day, then back to reporting on another. They did not know why the paper wrote an editorial, or what the differences are between something above the fold and below the fold. One young woman admitted that when she tries to go online to read it, she gets distracted.

"By what?" I asked.

"By Youtube."

I brought a friend to class the following week: Peter McNelly is a long-time journalist (print and broadcast) and a great teacher. I asked him to show the class how a newspaper comes together and why. In two hours, he did it and I saw the light come into my students' eyes.

Thanks Peter.

The following week, we listened and watched how different broadcasters handled the same story out of Cairo. We listened to CBC Radio's World Report of November 16, NPR's Morning Edition for November 16, the CTV National News (from the night before) and CBC TV's "The National," also from November 15th.

The students were very perceptive: they found CBC Radio to be dull and not very informative (I had to agree. It sounded like reporters and host were just mailing it in that morning...). They picked up on NPR's heightened anxiety level around whether the Islamists would take over and what this would mean for Israel. They liked Lisa Laflamme's hosting on CTV. But they really liked CBC TV's "The National." They found it very nuanced and smart. I had to agree. The National that night, was excellent with two solid reports on Egypt.

What this taught me was that journalism instructors need to understand their students better. These students are coming from a different place than I imagined. Probably a lot different from where I and my journalistic cohort came from.

It is pointless to lament the lack of connective tissue between first year students and the media, as I have heard many teachers do. Once these students make it to grad school, it will be different when students and profs are more closely aligned intellectually and share a common journalistic language.

But right now and back at the beginning, we need to help these smart and motivated students find their way. It's awfully easy to crush their hopes and dreams. The assumptions harbored by the professoriat (and by me) about patterns of media consumption need to be re-thought, especially for students just out of high school.