Tag: 2007

Seven Inklings for 2007

Ryan Sholin2 Comments


Fire in the Evening by Paul Klee

(I started this post out as a list of the most popular posts on this blog this year, and then immediately got bored with it, which I figured wasn’t a good sign of the prospects of you, dear readers, becoming bored as well. Hence, the following seven inklings/predictions/resolutions.)

  1. Reinvent one thing at a time. Choose your passion, your poison, your niche, your specialty, and become an expert in it as fast as you can. Then move on to your next passion. Keep learning.
  2. Take care of your body and your mind. Stretch both frequently. Challenge yourself as a habit.
  3. Develop a network of sources for inspiration, filtration, and discussion. Anything is possible, and anyone can have the right answers.
  4. Use collaborative tools at work to save time and avoid doubling up on tasks.
  5. Step away from the computer from time to time. Go out and report on something. Take pictures, shoot video, whatever you like, but get outside and experience the world first-hand. Worry about sharing it online later.
  6. Get some input from outside your niche. Print designer? Learn about CSS. Web designer? Hit the museum and check out some Paul Klee. Writer? Listen to This American Life.
  7. Don’t forget to have fun. If you’re not doing what you’re doing on purpose, think about what you’d rather be doing, and work toward doing it.

Thanks to all for a great year.

Which newspaper will drop its print edition first?

Ryan Sholin1 Comment

Wired News prediction for 2007: “A major newspaper gives up printing on paper to publish exclusively online.”

Howard Owens doesn’t think so: “Ain’t happening. There’s still too much revenue tied up in print and not enough online. A major newspaper — I’m taking this to mean a major metro — couldn’t support it’s current news operation with a digital-only strategy. Not now. Not yet. Not for a couple to a few years.”

Lucas Grindley follows the money: “If a newspaper stops printing, about two-thirds of its operating expenses are thrown out the window. No more newsprint. No more carriers. No more circulation department, sales kiosks and all that.”

Bryan Murley says college papers can do it under certain circumstances:

  • A small advertising base
  • A majority of funding from student fees
  • A small staff
  • A visionary editor
  • A forward-thinking adviser
  • A fully wired campus

Calling the Spartan Daily…

Steve Greene was right when he recommended the Daily become a weekly print paper with a continuous online news site, a la the [X]Press at San Francisco State.

Cue rant: I’m not going into the painful details about how much talking-head event coverage gets into the Daily, or how certain stories (and feature photos) are repeated each and every semester (ballroom dancing, anyone?), or how much superfluous wire copy gets into print during busy points in the school year, but seriously, students are being cheated out of the experience of working in a continuous news environment because the faculty sees the print product as the end-all be-all of newspapering. Note to my peers: As reporters, you will be expected to get stories done before 5pm on occasion, and they will be posted online immediately. That’s the real world of newspapers today. It’s nice that the Daily has trained a steady string of page designers, but it could just as easily turn out an annual crop of multimedia producers. Wouldn’t that be a bit of a modernization? End rant.

How much of the same can be said of your major metro daily? Or your small-to-medium town broadsheet replete with wire copy on international events and faraway football games?

How many broadsheets will be willing to start the process of change by re-aligning as tabloid-size papers with less cable news and Internet overlap of content?

We’ll see more announcements of this sort of thing in 2007.  I wish that college newspapers would lead adoption instead of following five years behind trends, but that might still be a pretty hefty wish.

Good luck to all daily print publications this year — they’re going to need it.