I was a part of an online journalism class and an enterprise journalism class. Both had conflicting views on journalism, the direction it’s headed and what citizen journalism is. It was interesting to see and learn from these different professors and their thoughts on the news industry.

I found that my opinions would start to change from one day to the next depending on what lecture or lesson I just had. At one end of the spectrum I had a professor teaching me the wonders of blogs, interactive content and all other things you can do on the web in the journalism business. Then I would go to another class where he talked about the wonders of the newsroom, hard-nosed reporting and investigative pieces.

To make a long story short I think this semester I went a schizophrenic.

One part of me has learned to love blogging. I love giving my opinion and the immediate satisfaction of hitting publish. The other part of me romanticizes journalism and the idea of getting a scoop or tip and running with it.

Every week I feel like I changed my mind about what I wanted to use my journalism degree for. Is it useless? Will I end up blogging on some no-name website or will I end up covering stories for a newspaper? Will there even be newspapers in three to five years?

Getting two different opinions, while at times confusing, actually made me a better journalist I think. Because of both of these classes I got to have more experience in both the online and print journalism world, which I hope will be an asset when I’m looking for a job.

It’s also nice to know that I’m not the only one confused about where journalism is heading… my professors don’t know either.

“Henry is engaged to Loleini Tonga, and the couple has been raising three children. Tonga’s MySpace page identifies herself as “Mrs. C. Henry” and has a picture of her next to a person who appears to be Henry. She also has a post from Tuesday talking about buying wedding rings. A neighbor said Wednesday that the Tonga family owns the home where police say the incident began. Charlotte is home to his fiancée’s parents.”

At first I thought it was weird that the AP would be getting most of their information through MySpace, but then realized that it shouldn’t surprise me, especially with such a high-profile athlete. I’m guessing that she, and other members of Henry’s family wouldn’t comment so the reporter turned to the next best thing, public profiles.

While I think that public people lose most, if not all, of their privacy when they become famous, is it right to use the information of their families and friends? Does this cross a line? Or do you lose all your privacy by association?

The staff at wired.com explains it better than I ever could, so here is what that actually means for viewers:

“If your site requires a subscription or registration to see pages of the site, those locked-down pages won’t show up in search results. News sites have dealt with this by taking advantage of Google’s First Click Free program, where any single page of a website can be seen, as long as the visitor shows up through a link from Google News or Google web search. If a user then clicks on another link to the site from within the site or from Google, the website can push the user to register, sign in or subscribe.”

And here’s the reasoning behind the idea:

“The idea is to allow searchers to find and read content on pay sites like the Wall Street Journal or mandatory-registration sites like the New York Times, while simultaneously letting those sites encourage readers to sign up. Being included in the Google index is important for news sites, because Google search traffic can make up a majority of traffic to news sites. Google News, the automated newspaper created through aggregated links, drives comparatively little traffic and is not a large revenue maker for Google.”

So much for the season of giving… ouch, I know. Sorry I just couldn’t help myself.

I think it will take a while for this to actually affect consumers, if at all. People will probably just start getting their information from other sources if they are annoyed enough. What do you think? Will this change your online practices?

If you’re feed up enough I guess you could just try yahoo.

A few weeks ago, David Carr wrote an article chronicling the good old days of journalism. The piece talks about the end of the decade and how different the bid media companies were just 10 short years ago.

Here are some startling facts Carr has for you:

“employment in communications in New York had lost 60,000 jobs since 2000.”

“After 2000, jobs in traditional media industries declined at a rate of about 2.5 percent annually and then went into a dive in 2008 or so.”

Obviously the job setting in New York, and other big cities around the nation, has changed dramatically in the first decade of the 2000′s. But by now, those you still have a romanticized version of journalism (guilty as charged, I love All the Presidents Men) have changed their minds either about the profession in general or in what direction they will be taking it.

As my friend Kaitlyn Anness, a journalism student who is also the news editor for The Whit  and had a blog called The Unpaid Intern, said about journalism:

“Now, more than ever, students need to market themselves. They need to become unique. They need to blog, to create media that has never been thought of. Students need to understand and play into the interactive world of digital journalism.”

While Carr’s dramatic depiction of the fall of the media  is true and depressing to those in the journalism field, it is also a new challenge to those just breaking into the field and those who have to reinvent themselves.

And here is an article on the education initiative that Davidson is talking about. It was announced by President Obama at the end of November and has had excited almost everyone in the education field.

One last bit of HASTAC news. The deadline for applying to participate in the 2010 Global Innovations Conference has been extended to January 4th. Find out more here.

The forum splits up the idea of Digital Storytelling into three different, distinct areas.
1. Community Empowerment
2. Re-Defining the Role of the Academic Library
3. Purpose, Practice, and Potential

The first thing I immediately think of when I think about digital storytelling is Youtube. While not academic, Youtube tells all sorts of stories. They can be funny, sad, insightful, silly. They can also inspire or give people their 15 minutes of fame. I also think of Twitter, because one’s Twitter feed can truly tell a story. I especially think of the hastag sixwordstories. I remember reading a few #sixwordstories and feeling like I understood what the person was trying to convey. One in particular that stood out was by Melissa Harris-Lacewell. It was from a few months ago and Harris-Lacewell had been doing the six word stories all night. The one in particular that I remembered read Diagnosed with cancer. She fought back. It puts such a vivid picture in your mind. I can imagine each individual picturing a family member, friend or something else close to their heart when reading that.

I think that the key to digital storytelling is getting your message across in a way that people remember. This rings true for Youtube; everyone has their favorites they love to quote, as well as Twitter.

What is your favorite form of digital storytelling? Any examples?

The editorial, which you can find at www.guardian.co.uk, was published to try to convince members of government all over the world to help the environment during the Copenhagen climate summit.

Here Tom Clark, a writer at Guardian, explains how all of these newspapers got together.  

I think this is a great example of collective action. While nothing may actually occur because of the editorial, it says a lot about what the newspapers and the people who write for them want to accomplish. I also think it demonstrates how a population can help convince other populations to agree on certain issues and fight for them.

While it may be easier for newspapers to do collective action because they all have commonalities and resources, I’m impressed that 45 countries were involved. That being said, participatory media and the newspaper’s online versions probably made it easier to convey ideas, agree and work as a unit.

What do you think? Will this work? Or is it just for show?

For instance:

While I would probably want WaWa to behave this way on its Facebook fan page, would I want a law firm or other more “serious” business acting this way. What about media outlets l ike newspapers or news organizations? Do I expect different things from the New York Times as opposed to Atlantic City Weekly?

Other suggestions are smart, (Advertise! Promote! Have contests!) but I wonder just how seriously businesses are taking these suggestions. Granted some may be taking risks, but I have a feeling most companies use Facebook to show they are relevant to the times and emerging social media.

What do you think?

In it, they discuss different federal agencies and the work they have been doing in examining the problems in our nation’s newsrooms. Each agency has undergone investigations and have been discussing proposals that may help the newspaper industry. Within the next few weeks the FTC is going to hold hearings to figure out what they can do to eliminate the shrinking number of jobs there are at newspapers.

 In the third paragraph the authors bring up a great point, one that I’m surprised and annoyed that no one else has brought up before.

the way the challenges facing journalism are being discussed, indeed the way the crisis itself is being framed, will make it tough for even the most sincere policy-makers to offer a viable answer to it.

The authors point to the language used in many of these conferences and how the entire industry is being framed as obsolete because of the internet.

The FTC’s conference is titled “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” FCC chair Julius Genachowski explains the crisis as the result of “game-changing new technologies as well as the economic downturn.” The assumption is clear: it’s the Internet that’s the problem. But just as MTV’s debut pronouncement that “Video Killed the Radio Star” proved to be dramatically overstated, so is the notion that journalism’s disintegration can be attributed to a brand-new digital revolution or even an old-fashioned economic meltdown.

Another interesting section chronicles the downfall of newspapers predating the surge in popularity of the internet. This hasn’t previously been discussed and really sheds some light on what has gone wrong.

Along with the rest of journalism, the AP Stylebook is changing and adapting to become more aware of new and social media. The editors recently announced that they will be adding a new section of the book on new media and social media for the 2010 addition that will be released in June.  Currently, the book has sections for business, sports as well as punctuation.

I’m interested to see what the AP will and will not include in the section. It will be interesting to see how current the section will be, and if in future issues current entries will have to be deleted because of obscurity.

Regardless, this is a big deal for the social media community, and geeks like me who can’t wait to purchase a new copy of the stylebook.