New media, extinction, gridlock: Read!

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423)

It's the weekend. Time to wrap your brain around these ideas:

"New Journalism Ecosystem Thrives" (Investigative Reporting Workshop): The iLab, as it's called, a part of American University's School of Communication, set about chronicling the new nonprofit news operations that have risen as Old Media has declined. Charles Lewis, founder of the group, calls it a "living resource" in that it is a first pass at a list, with additions and corrections expected. One interesting finding: "Of the 60 nonprofit organizations profiled here, 38, or 63 percent, were begun just since 2006," he writes. And another: some two-thirds of the people who work full-time for these organizations once were employed at commercial enterprises. Be sure to click on the interactive map and the link to the detailed list of the nonprofits, complete with head-count and budget information.

Music video interlude: Because my daughter and I couldn't get far enough into the crowd at the Stewart-Colbert rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to see anything via JumboTron or hear everything we wanted to (over the constant chanting of "Louder, louder, LOUDER!" from those behind us.)

"NBCU: Old Is the New Young" (Mediaweek): Boomers, rejoice. You no longer are irrelevant once you hit the far side of the 25-54 demo. Now, says NBC Universal, 55-64 is just as important for advertisers as 18-34. And the company has even given the group a new name: AlphaBoomers. W00t!

"Launch of Newspaper Extinction Timeline for Every Country in the World" (Trends in the Living Networks): In case you want to keep track of how soon the newspaper (the ink-on-dead-trees variety) will disappear, futurist Ross Dawson has obliged with a color-coded map and graphic outlining "key factors" in their extinction. For the U.S., he predicts they'll be irrelevant by 2017; Canada isn't far behind at 2020. Unfortunately, some of the countries where newspapers are likely to hang on longer have also been identified as among the most dangerous for journalists, so moving there might not be a good career decision.

"10 Things I Wish I Knew about Freelancing a Year Ago" (Adam Westbrook): Westbrook, a radio broadcaster turned multimedia journalist, offers lessons from his 12 months as a freelancer. You'll need to click over to a French site to get the actual list, but the tips are in English. (Is it just me, or do some of them sound more negative than positive: "Being underpaid sucks"; "Cold-calling does not work"?) Words to the wise in any event.

Bonus video: Last week, I attended a day-long program in Washington, D.C., put on by the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Business Journalism, a group that offers free training to business reporters. (Disclosure: I've taken several of their courses in the past year; I'm a fan.) Our lunch speaker was Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, who coordinates Wonkbook, a blog about economic and public policy. His talk, pre-election, focused on how partisan Congress had become -- particularly the Senate -- and predicted "less and less will get done" with a new Congress in which each party controls a house. The Reynolds Center taped his talk. Listen for his discussion of the predicted gridlock beginning at about 3:50.

In the nick of time: An end-of-weekend read

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423)

Some heavy-lift reading just as the weekend ends:

"Investigative Shortfall" (American Journalism Review): This long read on the state of investigative journalism is worth the time, but I've got to tell you that it left me lamenting the loss of talent and institutional memory in so many newsrooms. Yes, new enterprises devoted to investigations are exciting, but seems that too many experienced journalists have had to give up the profession as they were kicked to the curb.

"The Journalists Formerly Known as the Media: My Advice to the Next Generation" (Jay Rosen: Public Notebook): New York University professor Jay Rosen is one of journalism's present-day pundits, the one who taunted the media with the line "the people formerly known as the audience" to describe the shift in power away from MSM (mainstream media). This lecture to an incoming class of students at a journalism school in Paris continues the pattern: If the media no longer is mass, then a journalist is ... well, many things. You have to wade through his long, long history lesson before getting to his bulleted points of advice. I took solace with Nos. 7 and 8: that the new news landscape can accommodate professional journalists because they still can deliver information not widely available -- the stuff that recipients don't yet know they want and need.

"Laid off? What are you going to do about it?" (Adam Westbrook): Coming full circle on this "Now what?" theme is a short piece by Adam Westbrook in which he draws attention to a new study on the state of journalism in the U.K. -- where the estimate is that up to 40 percent fewer jobs in journalism exist today than in 2001. (Click on the link to the study that Westbrook provides to see some heart-wrenching comments by those deemed "redundant.") Be sure to read to the end of his short piece for his cynical kicker close.

Here's a video reward for your attentiveness.

Let's digest this food for thought

It's the title that first caught my attention, "What have you got to lose?", on an interview with Adam Westbrook, a multimedia journalist from the UK who thinks, lectures and writes about the new age of journalism.

He thinks there's no better time than the present for journalists to become entrepreneurs:



And, to be sure, he's right that the kind of job security that used to exist in journalism, as it did in so many fields, is gone -- as it has disappeared in other industries, too.

Other short YouTube conversations with Westbrook on journalism can be seen here:

• What is a Next Generation Journalist?
• How do you build a portfolio career?
• Can anyone be an entrepreneur? 
• Putting journalists in the driver's seat.

It's all food for thought if you're trying to figure out how you want to continue in journalism (or even whether you want to).