Model staffing: pay or free?

I'm having a hard time getting beyond a knee-jerk reaction to the expansion of newspaper-college collaborations lumped under the "internship" heading.

The online newsletter Inside Higher Ed had a good roundup on the topic today, following The New York Times' announcement of a second pact with a journalism school to feed The Local, its neighborhood news site.

Under the headline "J-Schools to the Rescue?", Inside Higher Ed made this observation: "So why not make more explicit arrangements to have journalism students, who will work for course credit, fill the gaps left by the pros whom the news outlets could no longer afford to pay?"

Well, sure, why not take away my livelihood, and that of many, many other furloughed journalists, and put unpaid college interns in charge of reporting, writing and editing the news?

The Times has moved in that direction with The Local, an online hyperlocal news experiment launched a year ago in Brooklyn and northern New Jersey.

While expected to rely heavily on community residents for reporting and direction, the effort was led initially by Times staffers. But buyouts and reassignments at the paper soon altered that plan, and early this year, the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York was picked to handle day-to-day operations in Brooklyn. And last week, the Times said New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute would do the same for a new Local expected to debut by fall in Manhattan's East Village. (No j-school collaboration has been announced for the northern New Jersey Local, which seems to have built a robust roster of community participants.)

I have nothing against internships -- I had one in college that soon turned into a part-time paid staff position. And later as a newsroom manager, I coached my share of college interns and always gave extra attention to new graduates who listed an internship on their résumés when they applied for a reporting job.

But the pay-vs.-free staffing model is what bothers me here. Like other newspapers last year, the Times cut deeply into jobs (eliminating 100 newsroom positions by year's end), which usually necessitates a rejiggering of beats and/or outright elimination of some coverage. Yet through the j-school partnerships, news for some Big Apple neighborhoods will expand because there is no overhead for staffing.

One interview on the new East Village Local pooh-poohs that concern: "While critics cry foul over the Times' 'exploitation' of free student labor, they miss the point here: that this marks a progressive step for journalism training, and something students might actually want to do. Having your work appear on nytimes.com is worth a little 'free' labor now for bigger benefits later."

Let's hope those later benefits include a living wage.

How will future journalists evolve?

What's the career path for would-be reporters in the era of fading legacy media?

The question, which came up last week at a conference in New York City on the Future of Journalism Education, seemed to agitate John Thornton, a panelist in the session titled "Education of the Entrepreneurial Journalist" (see him here at about 27 minutes).

Thornton, a venture capitalist in Austin, is chairman of TexasTribune.org, a nonprofit online news operation that launched last fall to cover state government. (He's shown far left on the dais in this picture posted by the Paley Center, the conference host.)

Had he been told when he first entered the VC world that the old system was dying and he'd just have to figure things out for himself, "I would have lost a shitload of money for people -- right?" Thornton said. "If there was no sort of apprenticeship, no notion of a career path, that would have been a bad thing.

"And I just wonder how journalists, while they're off in their spare time being entrepreneurs, how they ... evolve in their craft," he said.

It was a question that wasn't answered at the conference. But it piqued my curiosity.

Traditionally, novice journalists got their foot in the door at a small newspaper or TV station or radio station, then progressed every few years to ever-bigger organizations until they might land on the national stage at the likes of the New York Times or CNN. Along the way, they did general-assignment grunt work until they could get a plum beat like City Hall or health care, learning on the job from experts in the community and from editors and reporters in the newsroom.

If that mold is crumbling as legacy media stumble, how will tomorrow's journalists develop? Where do journalism students see future jobs: print or online? Does the economic storm lashing the industry scare them, or are they secure in their entrepreneurial chops?

For some insight, I contacted Barbara Selvin, an assistant professor at the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University, who blogs at Internet Revolution, J-School Evolution on her course, Journalism 24/7, which explores the industry's "terrifying, exhilarating chaos."

Stony Brook, located on Long Island, has had a full-fledged j-school only since 2006. Selvin was its first full-time faculty hire, and she introduced the 24/7 core course to examine "the impact of the digital revolution on journalism."

In an email interview, Selvin assured me that many students "yearn to work in print, at the Times or elsewhere." But, she added, "most expect to work on the Web."

The young j-school has graduated fewer than three dozen students so far, and many are finding the job market tough. But some are working at entry-level print and broadcast positions they landed through the industry contacts of professors.

Do these students have the innate entrepreneurial bent we assume they have, eager to make a name for themselves by developing their own brand? "No, it's not a given for all," she said, "and many find the idea daunting. Others embrace it."

Selvin said the 24/7 course -- which is different each time she teaches it because the media are rapidly changing -- is a revelation to students. "Those of us in the business (now or formerly) take the current chaos for granted, but many of our students have only a vague awareness of what the headlines really mean for their careers," she said.

Yet they aren't put off by the chaos. "They see themselves as reporters covering the kinds of things reporters have always covered," she said. "Students are still idealistic, still detest injustice, still want to make the world a better place."

And, yes, they still "are as vague as ever about a career path."

Word to the wise: brand yourself

"Overwhelmed with the challenges facing the media, but excited about its future prospects. I have a lot of learning to do," tweeted Adam Falk, who expects to earn a degree in magazine journalism in 2011 from the University of Missouri at Columbia.

"The conference is over, my brain is full, my to-do list is long, but I couldn't be more excited about the future of journalism!" tweeted Michelle Flandreau, a broadcast journalism major at the school.

The two were among the journalism students who attended today's Carnegie Corporation of New York/The Paley Center for Media conference in New York City on the future of journalism education and tweeted about the program. (According to the site What the Hashtag, which tracks Twitter traffic, they were among more than 200 contributors offering nearly 800 tweets on the day-long event.)

I saw Falk and Flandreau in the audience as I watched a live stream of one of the day's sessions, which featured Jeff Jarvis of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism leading a panel on entrepreneurship and journalism. (Below is a photo posted to twitpic showing Jarvis, standing right, taking audience questions and comments as the panel wrapped up.)

There's been a lot of discussion lately (see here and here, for instance) about the state of journalism instruction, now that the bedrock of legacy newspapers has cracked.

One emerging theme is the journalist as entrepreneur, a favorite topic for Jarvis, which subscribes to the idea that reporters no longer will be identified with their employer but will be a franchise unto themselves. It's a "business" they'll need to develop.

Jarvis' panel offered up four entrepreneurs in online journalism --Rafat Ali, founder, publisher and editor of ContentNext Media; Phil Balboni, president and CEO of Global Post; John Harris, editor-in-chief of Politico; and John Thornton, chairman of The Texas Tribune  -- and he asked each of them what kinds of skills the next generation of working journalists should be taught.

And that's where Falk and Flandreau got their headaches: branding, marketing, creating business plans, developing niche specialties -- all in addition to learning to write and report well. Concurrently, j-schools should throw out the study tracks (print, broadcast, Web) into which students have always been slotted: "Digital should be the core of everything," Balboni said.

"Teach the business of news," he added. "... (It) is more important in many respects than the journalism."

The Paley Center promised to archive video from the conference here over the weekend.