Two years later, stories of survival from 'The Rocky'

It's a video that still leaves me choked up: the farewell to the Rocky Mountain News:


Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

It's now two years since the Denver paper closed -- a casualty of the Great Recession and the demise of publishing's traditional revenue model (ads on a printed page to reach the masses). To mark the anniversary, John Temple, who was The Rocky's editor and publisher, offers a couple of surveys on what his former colleagues are up to.

He found that many remain in journalism; others went into different fields, chose to retire or are still unemployed. All miss the "family" they had at the paper, and most worry about what the newspaper industry has lost as companies responded to the recession and media turmoil by cutting people and pages or closing operations.

You should read through the respondents' comments -- they're easy to relate to, especially if you were cut loose from a newspaper career, too (for me, via layoff). Take former sports columnist Bernie Lincicome, who decided to retire: "The daily feeling I have is one of irrelevance," she says. YES! I say out loud.

She continues: "I tried blogging for a while, mostly out of habit, partly from denial. It was just calisthenics with no game to play. ... I have done some freelance work, but, to be honest, have not worked very hard at finding more." YES! I say again.

The journey wasn't any easier for some of those who landed back in journalism. Kathy Bogan, who now works in Kenya as a design editor, says she battled "a sense of worthlessness" as résumé after résumé sent to prospective new employers went unanswered. (Yup, I can relate.)

Still, "I am fortunate to be working full-time, to be working in a newsroom again," she says. And, as an added bonus, in a place where newspapers are appreciated: "Here, hawkers tout at least four dailies in the traffic jams all day, there's a newsstand on every sidewalk, the news seems to be part of the daily diet, and print still dominates."

I'm not ready to become an ex-pat, but I'll look to take a smidgen of hope from their stories and soldier on.

Readings for the weekend

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423)

It's the weekend. Time to kick back for some good reads.

"Book Excerpt: Can Videogames Be Journalism?" (The Atlantic): I was a skeptic before, but now I'm thinking that maybe videogames do have a role in journalism's future. This piece on the soon-to-be-published Newsgames: Journalism at Play, written by a trio of academics involved in videogame research at the Georgia Institute of Technology, talks about the various forms games can take that make sense for journalism: infographic newsgames; documentary newsgames; puzzle newsgames. As the authors note, "it's worth remembering that games have been a part of the news for almost a century, since the first 'word-cross' puzzles appeared in the New York Sunday World in 1913." Perhaps I should go back to school, quick, to get a gamers' degree so I'll be ready.

"Good Journalism Will Thrive, Whatever the Format" (The Observer): Here's the argument that old platforms may die and be replaced by new ones, but journalism will go on forever. Despite Chicken Little cries that the sky is falling, "any intelligent discussion about the future needs to make the distinction between a particular format (print) and the function (journalism) that society needs to nurture. And it's the function that really matters."

Video interlude No. 1.

"After the Collapse: Rebuilding News in Denver" (Save the News): This is an uplifting, attaboy postscript to the loss of The Rocky Mountain News in early 2009 -- one of most wrenching modern-day closings of a metro daily newspaper. From its ashes, though, has come a new effort to keep investigative journalism alive, a nonprofit news collaborative funded by foundation grants. Here, executive director Laura Frank talks about the founding and reach of the I-News Network.

"Reinventing How to Cover a Press Conference" (LostRemote): Big press announcement planned, but the newsmaker hasn't organized a live feed of it? Be a fly on the wall and do it yourself, using various social and other tools available: laptop, webcam, Twitter, blog. And in a new-age twist, viewers (who grew in numbers as the event -- the "new" Twitter reveal -- went on) were able to submit questions that then could be posed at the presser.

And speaking of new Twitter:

"Twitter as Broadcast: What #newtwitter Might Mean for Networked Journalism" (Nieman Journalism Lab): I was just blown away by this almost-instant analysis of the new, revved-up Twitter and what it signifies: "The sameness of tweets’ structures, and the resulting leveling of narrative authority, has played a big part in Twitter’s evolution into the medium we know today: throngs of users, relatively unconcerned with presentation, relatively un-self-conscious, reporting and sharing and producing the buzzing, evolving resource we call 'news.' Freed of the need to present information 'journalistically,' they have instead presented it organically. Liberation by way of limitation." Wow.

Bonus video to introduce bonus reads offered in classic point-counterpoint fashion (or, in this day and age, Old Media vs. New Media):

• "The Hamster Wheel: Why Running as Fast as We Can Is Getting Us Nowhere" (Columbia Journalism Review)
• "Teaching Journalists to Read" (Felix Salmon)

Enjoy.