There is great hope for journalism in people like David Cohn
Recent posts have been especially dark on my part. Which isn’t entirely representative. I believe that journalism – especially that journalism practiced by the organizations that today publish daily metro papers – is essential, and can have a very bright future if we stop thinking about the last 150 years and focus on maybe just the next 10.
And let the smart people lead.
For instance, people like David Cohn, creator of Spot.us.
I am writing this post physically exhausted but emotionally charged. I feel like a lion. As if I could talk down the curmudgeonist of curmudgeons. Not because I know the answer(s) – but because if we can’t even talk those people down, then we might as well just crawl into a whole and give up. F- that! We are moving forward with or without them.
The answers are out there in every startup (journalism focused or otherwise), community, blog, micro-blogging, micro-financing and CMS on the web. The internet is ours for the taking if we only reach out and grab it with as many hands as possible.
Breathe deeply. This stuff is good for what ails you.
Dispatches from behind the locked doors of the API Summit
Mark Potts brings news of a rogue liveblog that made it through the virtual razor-ribbon today at the super-secret API newspaper crisis summit in Reston.
Big ups to Chuck Peters, CEO of The Gazette Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for 1. knowing how to use Twitter and coveritlive.com to get the news out fast attempt to bring more participants into the room, even if only virtually and 2. having the guts to do it, at the risk of the rolled eyes and possibly hostile glares of his CEO co-summiteers.
Chuck Peters: Just cutting costs is most likely “incorrect action”, without reengineering to meet key consumer needs.
Chuck Peters: Do you agree with Steve Yelvington that we have “painted ourselves into a corner” by following our success, like GM? Check out http://www.yelvington.com/node/501
Peters kept the news conversation flowing for several hours, eventually fielding questions and suggestions from participants on the liveblog and on Twitter. It ultimately became impossible for one person to both participate in the conference and field all the questions and suggestions flowing through his liveblog. Too bad the room wasn’t filled with others such as Yelvington, Potts, Jarvis and others to bring some perspective and other voices.
But for now, Chuck Peters, your colleagues and friends salute you. And congratulations for making it out alive!
UPDATE: What kind of coverage can you expect to get when 50 newspaper CEOs gather in one place to discuss the future of desperately struggling industry? Apparently, once you get past one brave soul with laptop and an EVDO card and some media-bloggers outside of the mainstream media, not much. Run a Google search for “American Press Institute” and, as of this writing at least, there’s nothing. Search the Romenesko blog – the industry gossip and tip sheet – and there’s nothing, not even a link to Chuck Peters’s liveblog.
What’s wrong with the U.S. newspaper industry? In this case, a stunning lack of curiosity, it would seem.
UPDATE 2: Made a few edits based on Chuck Peters’s comments below. I still think what he did today was great, but if he chooses to not call it strictly reporting, I’ll abide by that.