For Samford Crimson journalists

Deborah Howell asks, in The Washington Post,  “What makes a good reporter?”

Here are some of answers in bullet form, but you should read the entire piece:

Endless curiosity and a deep need to know what is happening.

Reporters go where the story is

Good reporters are committed to telling the story.

Good reporters are savvy enough to find sources they can trust

Good reporters know how to get access to people and documents

In which of these areas do you think you’ll do well? Where might you find yourself lacking and in need of improvement? How do these traits carry over into reporting and writing in your online journalism?

Chris O’Brien is writing about the new newsroom they’re looking to build at Duke. It sounds like they have the sort of situation where they can customize it to their needs and wants from the ground up. While that is great news for The Chronicle, it also makes them think about what they want the principles of their newsroom of the future to be:

Community: The community should be at the center of a newsroom. That can mean physical spaces for training, spaces for public events, and social spaces. But it also means making the community an integral part of the news and information gathering, discussions and production.
Multi-platform: The ideal newsroom should embrace all platforms — online, print, broadcast, mobile — on an equal footing. Any newsroom that organizes around a single platform, and considers the others to be secondary, risks becoming stagnant as those platforms change and new ones emerge.
Innovation: We’re entering an era of increasingly rapid change. The ideal newsroom today won’t be the ideal newsroom of 2012. So any newsroom needs to make innovation a priority and find ways to create the capacity for constant experimentation.
Collaboration: Because any newsroom will be one among many in its community, it’s critical that it figure out how to work with others in the news and information ecosystem, whether that’s linking, teaming up on strategic stories, or finding other ways to cooperate when its strategic.
Transparency: The explosion of information and news creates an enormous challenge for people to figure out which sources they can trust. The best way for a news organization to approach this problem is to become as transparent as possible. In the case of some new newsrooms we examined, that meant a transparent structure that allowed the public to see inside and invited them in. But in terms of content, that also means being as open as possible about your processes, sources, decisions and content.

Think they got  everything? Overlook something? Overthink something? Those are sound concepts, something they’ll likely be very proud of as they grow into their professional careers.

You can see their complete plan.

Two things in one exciting post this morning. First Erin Rosa, who’s been a working journalist for about five years now, wrote a fine essay about the future of the business:

Journalism is becoming a more egalitarian profession—and that’s a good thing. Although many media outlets will remain the property of a small bloc of parent corporations, more and more members of the public who may not be traditionally considered journalists are becoming involved with news coverage. A dramatic power shift has obviously occurred in the way the public produces and consumes news when an unemployed nineteen-year-old using free blogging software can report on the results of a controversial city council vote restructuring Denver’s election bureau and scoop a weathered professional before he even makes it back to the newsroom.

She goes on to talk about some of her experiences in the rapidly changing working wrld, and emerges optimistic about what she sees. You should be too; these are exciting times to be a journalist, particularly the kind willing to work hard and in an innovative fashion.

Later, at that same link, you’ll find an invitation:

Now we are issuing a similar invitation to the young people who’ve come into the profession in the last five years or so, and the young journalism students who soon will. We invite them to air their concerns and hopes about journalism, too. The central questions: What do you see in this business that makes you still want to pursue it? How do you imagine people will get quality news five years down the road? How will you try to fit in?

They’re publishing your thoughts on their site — not a bad place for your talents to get noticed — so compose your thoughts and then share them there with the rest of us. And here too. How can I help you achieve those things? Comments always welcome.

Just moments after writing the post below I ran across this, courtesy of Jay Rosen. The Knight Fellowship Program at Stanford is changing with the times:

Beginning with the 2009-10 fellowship year, the program will put a new emphasis on journalistic innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership.

The program is transforming itself in order to serve the needs of journalism and journalists as much in the years ahead as it has in the past. The dizzying landscape of layoffs and consolidation, Internet media sites, citizen journalism and bloggers make journalism a chaotic and exciting proposition today. We are making bold changes to meet these new realities.

Journalism, as a practice, is changing swiftly. Arm yourself well with the tools and techniques while you’re on campus.

Anil Dash writes about how Six Apart could help journalists now swimming through uncharted waters. That little blog post is turning into an interesting enterprise because of passion for the craft:

A lot of people are thinking about how journalism is going to evolve online, and many people are passionate about making sure journalists make the leap.

[...]

Overall, there’s an optimism which indicates that having a starting point to do something proactive and positive will be a great first step for many journalists to take control of their careers in an industry that is going through enormous upheaval.

[...]

The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program is not a silver bullet. It’s not going to singlehandedly preserve the career and income of every working journalist who has a job today. And frankly, the response has been so overwhelming that we won’t be able to accept every application at first.

But what we can do is give journalists the tools to take control of their own presence online. This program will let a lot of the most eager writers and reporters learn the ropes about how to be more effective and successful on the web.

What we’re all going to be in the future is one-part journalist and one part marketer. There’s no better place — plenty of tools, low barrier of entry and an immense network — than the internet.

And you’re using many of the available tools already. Facebook, Flickr, blogs, personal websites, Twitter and more can be used for much more than just chatting with friends and broadcasting personal pictures. Think about putting those instruments together in such a way to help you get the next big job, build professional credibility, land a big scoop, listen to a community of sources and more …

If she had it to do over again she might react differently, because this is the sort of fly-off-the-handle that will follow her forever.

An intern for KSTP-TV did not take well to being fired. She began hurling threats at an executive producer and kicked out the glass of a conference room door in an attempt to get at her, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday.

Jennifer Nicole Anato-Mensah, 21, a University of Minnesota student, was told about 7:15 p.m. Oct. 13 that things weren’t working out for her.

“This is a young girl who was not understanding concepts in a television newsroom,” said Danielle Prenevost, 33, executive producer of the station’s early evening newscasts. “I said, ‘I don’t think your level of college experience is enough for this job.’ “

At that point, Prenevost said, Anato-Mensah “just lost it.”

[...]

Several newsroom employees heard Anato-Mensah shouting, yelling obscenities and threatening Prenevost …

Not the sort of thing that’s going to help her find employment later.

The New York Times notices there are new models for creating reporting, that there is a demand for that reporting, and that there are journalists who will do it.

Maybe not a “where were you when?” moment, but this is pretty important as recognition goes. The whole article is worth a quick read.

Have you watched anything on Ledger Live yet? This is a daily video program — and blog, among other things — that they produce from their newsroom with highlights of the day’s coverage, promos of what to watch for and things you’ll find floating around the internet.

The program originated earlier this year, and the product has improved over time, but they started this on the strength of about a week of training time and have turned it into a nice convergence effort.

This is cool stuff.

Spot.Us is a “marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate.”

The work of reporters, tipsters and others pioneers “community funded reporting” on “important and perhaps overlooked stories.”

Want to contribute? Here’s the FAQ for reporters.

Marc Wood at ACP has posted a nice collection of college newspaper’s Wednesday editions. Have a look at some of these on Flickr.