The Quality Journalism in the Digital Age Conference on April 10 was definitely a Friday well spent. Hosted by the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, media professionals, academics, content providers, photojournalists and leaders in the nonprofit world shared their views about the changing landscape and its future as they see and live it. We also learned about their provocative work and research.
The day was open to the public at no cost – anyone interested was invited. I had the opportunity to chat with a TV producer for the “CBS Evening News” and the executive producer of “NJ TV News with Mary Alice Williams“. You can hear both of their presentations at the links below in Parts 2 and 3. The day wrapped up with a lovely evening reception at The Rutgers Club where I spoke with a sharp enthusiastic Rutgers student about Instagram and Pinterest and with a Syracuse University grad (my alma mater) who is a political and economic reporter for Millennial, a digital magazine.
You can access all four sessions at the following links:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OQNdhEYRvo
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90qpEZPjYaQ
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqvLd-H2Ca4
Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTyzXhJE64U
Here are a few takeaways:
- Newsrooms are a public good – the best hope is public support and engaging consumers. An example is NJ News Commons.
- Find new sources of funding to help sustain journalism as The Washington Post did when the founder of Amazon.com Jeff Bezos took ownership.
- Internalize quality journalism as a VALUE and in PRACTICE. Quality journalism comes with a cost.
- The number of copy/layout editors at U.S. daily newspapers has declined drastically. In 2006 there were 10,424; in 2014 there were 4,722.
- Many reporters now need multimedia skills since they’re required to shoot-write-edit-report their own stories.
- Long form journalism is becoming more popular.
- Trustworthiness is key for consumers of news.
- Even with all the disturbances, much of what newspaper reporters do today they were doing 30 years ago.
- Social media has helped build audiences for those outlets with limited resources.
Thank you Phil Napoli @pmnapoli, Katie McCollough @kemcco and Rutgers @MPIIRutgers for organizing an insightful important conference.
What do you think the future of journalism holds?