I just signed a petition to save The Times-Picayune, New Orleans’ prize-winning newspaper, which recently announced plans to cut print publication back to three days a week.
It was where I cut my teeth as a cub journalist, starting on the copy desk during my senior year in college at Loyola University. I became a stringer, writing about issues on the college beat, including the paper’s first story on the then-unknown phenomenon of the Internet. Later, I covered city government, higher education, the famous Louisiana legislature, and topics including a Superfund cleanup, underage drinking, homeless teenagers and the Pearl River swamp. I was there when the paper won one of its Pulitzer Prizes, for a series on the dire state of the world’s oceans.
I owe much in my career to my mentors from the T-P, including Kristin Gilger (now associate dean of the Arizona State University Cronkite School of Journalism), Keith Woods (now a vice president at NPR), and Mark Schleifstein (still the voice of the environment at the Picayune).
But it’s not out of a sense of mere nostalgia that I question the Picayune’s move.
I’m all for digital news. It is, I believe, the way of the future. I just think that the time isn’t right to cut back print publication – and certainly not to cut the newsroom by half. Here’s why:
This move won’t save much money. According to an analysis by Rick Edmonds on Poynter.org, these cuts will save a paltry 3 percent. He figured saving 25 percent of costs by eliminating four days of printing plus employee cutbacks, compared to a predicted 22 percent loss in advertising and circulation revenue.
A professional staff is needed to create a professional product. Readers and viewers want a high-quality publication, whether it’s on paper or on the Internet or both. Cutting half of the newsroom – reporters, editors, copy editors, designers, photographers and so on – will dramatically limit the Picayune’s ability to create its award-winning, community-focused coverage.
The digital divide is still great, especially in New Orleans. A story published by thelensnola.org reported that high-speed Internet subscribers in New Orleans tend to be white and in higher income brackets. The implication is that poor, minority communities will be more cut off from the news – and the civic engagement it fosters.
Many people complain that the paper’s website, NOLA.com, isn’t ready for prime time. The website got a recent redesign, but critics say the site is terrible.
Journalism is a business, sure, but it’s also a public trust. Good journalism can and should be done on multiple platforms. This move, however, seems rash – especially in a city where the print edition is still so much loved and needed.
Can class assignments be both educational and entertaining?
I think so. Last semester’s Live Twitter Coverage assignment seemed to hit that sweet spot for students, who said it was “exhilarating,” “fun,” “a great learning experience,” and even “one of the coolest assignments I’ve had.”
It’s easy to duplicate, so I’ll share it here for other instructors who might want to try it. Enjoy!
Twitter for Journalism
Overview: This assignment teaches students how to use Twitter for journalism – specifically, to cover a community event live on Twitter as part of a group project. After the event, students write a two-page paper describing the experience and analyzing their work. Later, the teacher leads the class in creating a Storify story about the event. This assignment spans 2-3 weeks of class.
Student audience: This assignment was for the JOUR 2500 basic reporting class at Bowling Green State University, which all journalism and PR students take. It’s appropriate for beginning reporting students but could apply to more advanced students as well.
Advance planning: The instructor should identify a major community event that students can cover over several hours or days. In Fall 2011, I used the Black Swamp Arts Festival, a community arts fest in downtown Bowling Green that spans three days. In Spring 2012, I picked BGSU’s Dance Marathon, a student-driven event to raise money for charity that lasts for 36 hours. I put the event dates on the syllabus early in the semester, then as the time came closer, gave students the opportunity to sign up for two-hour time slots using Google docs. Last semester, because I had 30 students and only 13 shifts available, I let them pair up. In the fall semester, students were on their own.
Week 1
Twitter setup: Prior to class lectures and practice on Twitter, I asked students to do two things: 1) set up their Twitter accounts, and 2) read a set of articles on Twitter and journalism. My instructions looked like this:
Prior to class Tuesday, set up a Twitter account you can use for news purposes, if you haven’t already. Fill out your bio and add our class website. Bring your Twitter username to class so we can share. Download Twitter app to your smartphone, if possible. If you don’t have a smartphone, read the instructions for using Twitter via SMS. Important sites:
– Twitter – go here to create your account, fill out profile
– Tweetdeck – download a nifty, free desktop Twitter user interface
– Twitter mobile downloads for your smartphone or read FAQs on SMS and other options
Class 1 – Twitter lecture: I gave my introductory lecture on Twitter on Tuesday and had students log into their Twitter accounts to do some exercises. You can find my Twitter PowerPoint here. Homework for the next class was:
Follow your classmates and instructor on Twitter. Find 10 and follow “real” journalists. Post 10 new journalism-related tweets (or retweets).
Class 2 – Event Planning: On Thursday, I reviewed specific instructions for the weekend’s reporting shift, including research and planning for students’ shifts. You can find my Spring 2012 assignment sheet here on Google docs. My list of Twitter Best Practices is here.
Week 2
Class 1 – Live Twitter practice. We used part of a class to do a brief live-Tweeting experience using Susan Cain’s excellent TED Talk on The Power of Introverts. Pretending the lecture was live on campus, I gave the students 10 minutes to prepare by doing research. Then we covered the 20-minute speech “live” by Tweeting it as we listened. I instructed the students to use a group hashtag. We used TweetChat and TweetDeck to follow the Twitter stream and watched it scroll live on the projector screen. Half the class Tweeted using the lab computers and half used their mobile devices. Then we switched halfway through the lecture. This exercise proved a great way to practice and work out some of the kinks of live Tweeting, such as having links and hashtags saved in advance, and what to do when mistakes are Tweeted. (Answer: Correct them in another Tweet.)
Week 2 ended with the weekend Live Twitter Coverage assignment. The Dance Marathon event lasted from Saturday morning until Sunday night. Students had signed up for two-hour shifts. All I had to do was sit back and monitor them on TweetDeck, occasionally retweeting or sending them private notes. Ahhhh!
Week 3
Class 1 – Post-mortem. First, we discussed what worked and what didn’t.
The biggest mistakes: spelling and AP style errors, as well as several name misspellings. Students corrected these factual errors as soon as they noticed them. Other mistakes: Not preparing enough, getting too focused on the technology and not stopping to talk to people enough. Some people had technical trouble; one person had to borrow someone’s laptop on the spot.
The upsides: lots of fun, lots of photos and some video. The students universally enjoyed the assignment, even if they didn’t think they would at the outset. They found Twitter a fun, valuable tool. They loved the immediacy and the interaction with both audience and sources. Some people got creative by adding novel hashtags and bringing in new usernames.
The students’ papers were due. Part 1 was a cut-and-paste of their Tweets (so I didn’t have to search for them individually). Part 2 was their self-evaluation against the assignment and the Twitter Best Practices document. The paper was easy for me to read, and I enjoyed hearing their honest (and sometimes funny) self-reflections.
Class 1 or 2 – Storify. Next, I led the students in creating a Storify on the Dance Marathon event. To spend more time with Storify, make this an entire separate class. You can find my Storify handout here. I encouraged the students to approach the Storify as a separate story with a beginning, middle and end, using not only their own Tweets, but those of others, as well as any content they could find on the Web. Afterward, we uploaded the Storifys to our class website. Here’s one example:
That’s it!
Hope you enjoyed this overview of a simple Twitter live coverage assignment. If you like this assignment or use it yourself, please let me know.
It was where I cut my teeth as a cub journalist, starting on the copy desk during my senior year in college at Loyola University. I became a stringer, writing about issues on the college beat, including the paper’s first story on the then-unknown phenomenon of the Internet. Later, I covered city government, higher education, the famous Louisiana legislature, and topics including a Superfund cleanup, underage drinking, homeless teenagers and the Pearl River swamp. I was there when the paper won one of its Pulitzer Prizes, for a series on the dire state of the world’s oceans.