First, congratulations to Sarah! Second, props to Dean David Boardman at Temple University (a public university, it should be noted) for bringing top talent to the journalism program -- Sarah succeeds the terrific Aaron Pilhofer, and she joins a faculty that includes Yvonne Latty, who has done some incredible community-based work with students since she joined the faculty a few years ago. The field is very fortunate to have so many smart and big-thinking people imparting their knowledge -- and listening deeply -- to [the people formerly known as --h/t Jay Rosen] "the next generation" of journalists.
Interesting interview. Understanding prople’s information needs is no easy task. Sarah is right, though. News organization must try to dive beneath the obvious.
Her main point seems to be that news business is built on a lot of bad habits and bad assumptions and there is no longer room “for that kind of sloppy work.” Thus, there’s a need for “new theories and new models.”
Alvarez, as an example of a “bad habit” and “agenda-setting”, said “a lot of news organizations have spent significant time and money trying to convince people that climate change matters and that it's happening” and even though it’s an important issue “that kind of agenda-setting role falls short when it is a substitute for listening to what people do care about, which is safety.”
Huh?
That seems to be a strawman/non sequitur argument rolled into one. I’m lost on the connection between wasting time and money trying to convince people climate change matters and a failure to understand people care about safety. It might help if she provided specific examples of news outlets trying to persuade readers and viewers that climate change matters.
Much of the climate change reporting I’ve seen portrays climate change as an issue that matters to both those who believe it’s a real threat to health and safety and those who believe it’s a hoax. As for safety, much of the reporting I’ve seen links global warming to dangers associated with flooding, hurricanes, wildfires, and drought. Of course, skeptics see that reporting as left-wing, Henny-Penny stuff.
There’s been no shortage of stories that President Trump believes climate change is a hoax. Several million voters apparently agree. Bye-bye Paris climate agreement. Which gets lots of mainstream media coverage, as it should. Is that agenda-setting?
Outlier Media, the information service Alvarez founded, could be accused of agenda-stetting. AI Overview says, “Outlier Media's agenda is to amplify the voices of Detroiters in discussions about civic life, democracy, and policy.
Alvarez’s concept seems to combine aspects of citizen, activist, solutions and collaborative journalism. While I don’t think Outlier Media is a model for a viable, sustainable, comprehensive local newsgathering concept, it seems to be a valuable resource for many Detroiters and could be a niche-reporting model for other cities. It’s just not a full-fledged, well-funded and staffed newsgathering operation that, hopefully, would not engage in citizen or activist or solutions journalism. And rely far less if at all on philanthropy.
Alvarez says her a new job at Temple University’s Klein College will involve “journalism innovation” and “developing models for news and information systems built in the public interest.”
“So many of our news organizations are built on longstanding but weak assumptions and models,” she says. “It's been true for decades, if not longer. These urgently need to be replaced with practices and principles more likely to be of actual use to communities.”
She might begin her work right there inside Klein College where journalism students learn broadcast newsgathering and delivery with a decades-old (almost six) newscast concept based on the journalistically corrupt Eyewitness News format. (Fun fact: the format had its beginnings there in Philly in 1965 thanks to Al Primo and shortly thereafter its Action News sibling was born there too, thanks to Frank Magid.)
The journalism school’s “Temple Update” news show is 100% virgin, cookie-cutter Eyewitness News with its dramatic news-open theme music, dual anchors (plus weather and sports presenters), happy talk banter, and lots of “black hole” live shots that take viewers for idiots. Temple graduates are very well prepared to take low-paying jobs at hundreds of local TV news outlets around the country that use the same format, a format they are taking to the grave.
Another fund fact: No news sets, anchors or useless live shots are needed in cyberspace news reporting, where TV and cable news outlets should have gone, completely, more than a decade ago. (Just today Forbes’ reporter David Bloom reported on CNN’s latest job cuts as “a painful reminder that what worked in the news business for decades isn’t working now.”)
Sadly, Temple, and many other J-schools, keep pumping graduates into a critically depressed, oversaturated reporter job market to the benefit heavily leveraged television and cable conglomerates who pay down their billions with low wages and layoffs.
My general thoughts about local news are not aimed at Dick Tofel or Sarah Alvarez who are out there fighting the good fight.
First let’s get our heads out of our bottoms. Let’s stop looking to “experts” in universities and think tanks and self-proclaimed gurus who study local news then talk enough bullshit to get grants, the bigger the pile of shit, the bigger the grant.
What will be the next shiny object? I don’t know or I too could share in the next pot of gold. Funny thing, we’ve all been looking for at least a decade and no one has found it, although it may be right in front of our eyes.
Maybe the experts have even dabbled in actually working in local news at one time, but now just waste my time with their knowing of everything. I know there’s more money in that, but I believe if we do this right and keep trying, we can build good jobs in the news business once again.
I had a union reporting job for many years and hope our nonprofit news outlet InDepthNH.org gets big enough to not only have real full-time workers, but to have union jobs to boot.
If you want to know what works in local news, give us nonprofit news outlets run by real journalists, money, lots more money.
Talk to the people like me who do news every day with no roadmap and no real help from high up on the academic hill. (FYI to all you experts out there please stop using the term news ecosystem. It makes my stomach turn and reminds me I don’t have time to find out what it really means.)
Let’s take that money invested in chairs at universities and studies upon studies and invest it in the news outlets that are actually reporting local news and have done so for more than a few years with people who know what they are doing.
I know what’s wrong with local news – clear my throat – not enough money. We know what we are doing and need to get enough – here it comes again - money - to hire young people to pass on the real reporting skills beyond rewriting press releases and continue the tradition of reporting news that matters. And try to ignore the billions headed toward AI, which may just be the final blow to kill off local news once and for all.
What news matters in your community? Real reporters, not robots, need only pick up their phones and open their emails. Real people call and write and tell us what matters to them and what we need to report on, how they have been harmed or how they’ve been venerated.
Take the government news releases and run them labeled as press releases. You can count on them being self-serving glop and the public should know what their elected and appointed officials are passing off as news.
Take that time, which is of course money, and work on real news stories about what is happening to real people. I learned that from Anne Galloway who started the very successful VtDigger in neighboring Vermont before I started InDepthNH.org. She was very generous sharing what made the Digger such a successful news outlet. We should all be grateful to her. I know I am.
The Digger is a great starting road map. It’s different here in New Hampshire and everywhere, but we are learning hands-on every day what the news needs today are of the people we serve.
So take the Digger model, which is really just keep doing it, add lots of experience in the place you are reporting on, then work hard, report honestly, don’t talk down to your readers, (we really aren’t smarter than they are), and give it a go.
Don’t fly in inexperienced people through Report for America and hope the young people will solve your reporting problems. (Disclaimer. I’ve been denied by RFA at least four times, lost count.) Yes, the young need the experience but first the – throat clearing – money to RFA and all the middlemen organizations that skim the cream off the top of the funding world create the best jobs for their top dogs who make way more than reporters ever will. In a perfect world Report for America and middlemen organizations will be a great addition.
But we are in a news crisis. Hell, we were in a crisis when I started InDepthNH.org 10 years ago.
People in New Hampshire – like everywhere – talk with their, you know - money. And they are investing in InDepthNH.org like never before, calling and emailing like never before. Our readers and a handful of generous philanthropists are actually building the news outlet New Hampshire needs and deserves with their incredible support.
What’s worse than a crisis? Catastrophe? Calamity? Cataclysm? Look around. It’s right here whatever you call it. And unfortunately, we are here, sometimes adrift, being led by a lot of people who have their heads up their bottoms.
First, congratulations to Sarah! Second, props to Dean David Boardman at Temple University (a public university, it should be noted) for bringing top talent to the journalism program -- Sarah succeeds the terrific Aaron Pilhofer, and she joins a faculty that includes Yvonne Latty, who has done some incredible community-based work with students since she joined the faculty a few years ago. The field is very fortunate to have so many smart and big-thinking people imparting their knowledge -- and listening deeply -- to [the people formerly known as --h/t Jay Rosen] "the next generation" of journalists.
I really like Ms. Alvarez!
Interesting interview. Understanding prople’s information needs is no easy task. Sarah is right, though. News organization must try to dive beneath the obvious.
Commenting on your Sarah Alvarez conversation:
Her main point seems to be that news business is built on a lot of bad habits and bad assumptions and there is no longer room “for that kind of sloppy work.” Thus, there’s a need for “new theories and new models.”
Alvarez, as an example of a “bad habit” and “agenda-setting”, said “a lot of news organizations have spent significant time and money trying to convince people that climate change matters and that it's happening” and even though it’s an important issue “that kind of agenda-setting role falls short when it is a substitute for listening to what people do care about, which is safety.”
Huh?
That seems to be a strawman/non sequitur argument rolled into one. I’m lost on the connection between wasting time and money trying to convince people climate change matters and a failure to understand people care about safety. It might help if she provided specific examples of news outlets trying to persuade readers and viewers that climate change matters.
Much of the climate change reporting I’ve seen portrays climate change as an issue that matters to both those who believe it’s a real threat to health and safety and those who believe it’s a hoax. As for safety, much of the reporting I’ve seen links global warming to dangers associated with flooding, hurricanes, wildfires, and drought. Of course, skeptics see that reporting as left-wing, Henny-Penny stuff.
There’s been no shortage of stories that President Trump believes climate change is a hoax. Several million voters apparently agree. Bye-bye Paris climate agreement. Which gets lots of mainstream media coverage, as it should. Is that agenda-setting?
Outlier Media, the information service Alvarez founded, could be accused of agenda-stetting. AI Overview says, “Outlier Media's agenda is to amplify the voices of Detroiters in discussions about civic life, democracy, and policy.
Alvarez’s concept seems to combine aspects of citizen, activist, solutions and collaborative journalism. While I don’t think Outlier Media is a model for a viable, sustainable, comprehensive local newsgathering concept, it seems to be a valuable resource for many Detroiters and could be a niche-reporting model for other cities. It’s just not a full-fledged, well-funded and staffed newsgathering operation that, hopefully, would not engage in citizen or activist or solutions journalism. And rely far less if at all on philanthropy.
Alvarez says her a new job at Temple University’s Klein College will involve “journalism innovation” and “developing models for news and information systems built in the public interest.”
“So many of our news organizations are built on longstanding but weak assumptions and models,” she says. “It's been true for decades, if not longer. These urgently need to be replaced with practices and principles more likely to be of actual use to communities.”
She might begin her work right there inside Klein College where journalism students learn broadcast newsgathering and delivery with a decades-old (almost six) newscast concept based on the journalistically corrupt Eyewitness News format. (Fun fact: the format had its beginnings there in Philly in 1965 thanks to Al Primo and shortly thereafter its Action News sibling was born there too, thanks to Frank Magid.)
The journalism school’s “Temple Update” news show is 100% virgin, cookie-cutter Eyewitness News with its dramatic news-open theme music, dual anchors (plus weather and sports presenters), happy talk banter, and lots of “black hole” live shots that take viewers for idiots. Temple graduates are very well prepared to take low-paying jobs at hundreds of local TV news outlets around the country that use the same format, a format they are taking to the grave.
Another fund fact: No news sets, anchors or useless live shots are needed in cyberspace news reporting, where TV and cable news outlets should have gone, completely, more than a decade ago. (Just today Forbes’ reporter David Bloom reported on CNN’s latest job cuts as “a painful reminder that what worked in the news business for decades isn’t working now.”)
Sadly, Temple, and many other J-schools, keep pumping graduates into a critically depressed, oversaturated reporter job market to the benefit heavily leveraged television and cable conglomerates who pay down their billions with low wages and layoffs.
For more on that, check my videos:
https://youtu.be/A1rLRX--A4k
https://youtu.be/SR3T8RzPywg
Lynn Packer
My general thoughts about local news are not aimed at Dick Tofel or Sarah Alvarez who are out there fighting the good fight.
First let’s get our heads out of our bottoms. Let’s stop looking to “experts” in universities and think tanks and self-proclaimed gurus who study local news then talk enough bullshit to get grants, the bigger the pile of shit, the bigger the grant.
What will be the next shiny object? I don’t know or I too could share in the next pot of gold. Funny thing, we’ve all been looking for at least a decade and no one has found it, although it may be right in front of our eyes.
Maybe the experts have even dabbled in actually working in local news at one time, but now just waste my time with their knowing of everything. I know there’s more money in that, but I believe if we do this right and keep trying, we can build good jobs in the news business once again.
I had a union reporting job for many years and hope our nonprofit news outlet InDepthNH.org gets big enough to not only have real full-time workers, but to have union jobs to boot.
If you want to know what works in local news, give us nonprofit news outlets run by real journalists, money, lots more money.
Talk to the people like me who do news every day with no roadmap and no real help from high up on the academic hill. (FYI to all you experts out there please stop using the term news ecosystem. It makes my stomach turn and reminds me I don’t have time to find out what it really means.)
Let’s take that money invested in chairs at universities and studies upon studies and invest it in the news outlets that are actually reporting local news and have done so for more than a few years with people who know what they are doing.
I know what’s wrong with local news – clear my throat – not enough money. We know what we are doing and need to get enough – here it comes again - money - to hire young people to pass on the real reporting skills beyond rewriting press releases and continue the tradition of reporting news that matters. And try to ignore the billions headed toward AI, which may just be the final blow to kill off local news once and for all.
What news matters in your community? Real reporters, not robots, need only pick up their phones and open their emails. Real people call and write and tell us what matters to them and what we need to report on, how they have been harmed or how they’ve been venerated.
Take the government news releases and run them labeled as press releases. You can count on them being self-serving glop and the public should know what their elected and appointed officials are passing off as news.
Take that time, which is of course money, and work on real news stories about what is happening to real people. I learned that from Anne Galloway who started the very successful VtDigger in neighboring Vermont before I started InDepthNH.org. She was very generous sharing what made the Digger such a successful news outlet. We should all be grateful to her. I know I am.
The Digger is a great starting road map. It’s different here in New Hampshire and everywhere, but we are learning hands-on every day what the news needs today are of the people we serve.
So take the Digger model, which is really just keep doing it, add lots of experience in the place you are reporting on, then work hard, report honestly, don’t talk down to your readers, (we really aren’t smarter than they are), and give it a go.
Don’t fly in inexperienced people through Report for America and hope the young people will solve your reporting problems. (Disclaimer. I’ve been denied by RFA at least four times, lost count.) Yes, the young need the experience but first the – throat clearing – money to RFA and all the middlemen organizations that skim the cream off the top of the funding world create the best jobs for their top dogs who make way more than reporters ever will. In a perfect world Report for America and middlemen organizations will be a great addition.
But we are in a news crisis. Hell, we were in a crisis when I started InDepthNH.org 10 years ago.
People in New Hampshire – like everywhere – talk with their, you know - money. And they are investing in InDepthNH.org like never before, calling and emailing like never before. Our readers and a handful of generous philanthropists are actually building the news outlet New Hampshire needs and deserves with their incredible support.
What’s worse than a crisis? Catastrophe? Calamity? Cataclysm? Look around. It’s right here whatever you call it. And unfortunately, we are here, sometimes adrift, being led by a lot of people who have their heads up their bottoms.
Thanks, Nancy West, nancywestnews@gmail.com
I speak only for myself.
InDepthNH.org is a member of Alliance of Nonprofit News Outlets, Institute for Nonprofit News and LION Publishers