And your question is! …

“What emerging technology or digital trend do you think will have a significant impact on journalism in the year or two ahead? And how do you see it playing out in terms of application by journalists, and impact?”

I work in a university journalism program, and my focus is largely on answering that question. Of course, I work around faculty and students who have mixed feelings about the overly fast pace of technological change, and how it’s changing journalism practice and the news industry. Some of my colleagues — and I bet it’s the same for you — might rather focus on the craft and theory of journalism; the technology that’s swirling around them and upsetting their world is an unwanted distraction. Other colleagues are immersed in the possibilities and opportunities that emerging digital technologies present. (Our Center for Media, Religion, & Culture recently hosted a Digital Religion conference, for example.)

I must admit, I don’t have much sympathy for those in journalism today (whether working professionally or in academia) who would like to put their heads in the sand in order not to hear about yet another technology development that’s going to alter their world. As I see it, technological developments of the last 15 years (the era of the “commercial Internet”) have upended journalism, all but destroyed old news business models, and put thousands of journalists out of work. Overall, we now have less investigative reporting and public-affairs journalism. And the loss of soldiers in the journalistic army means there are more chances for corruption to go unnoticed and unchecked.

Who’s to blame? The answer is clear to me: Journalists and those who manage news organizations. Our industry and profession didn’t act quickly or aggressively enough to adapt to the way that new technologies would change journalism.

But I’m a digital optimist. Technology also has presented incredible opportunities to improve journalism. Thousands and thousands of my journalism colleagues embrace the emerging technologies and work hard to figure out how to leverage them to keep the public better informed and get individual citizens involved in the news process and the conversation of news. It’s all good … except for the pesky fact that we have a lot of lost ground to make up for, and need to put more journalists to work in the new, digital-first news environment.

So what’s my point?: That this month’s Carnival question is not just about the latest gadgets. It’s not just the obvious question from a gadget freak who buys the latest iPhone whenever a new model comes out. It’s an important question, and your answers can play a role in making sure that news practitioners and executives, and journalism academics, understand how important it is for journalists and news industry leaders to understand what’s coming at them next — so they’re not caught blind-sided, again.

I’ll close by telling you about a lecture I attended a few days ago at the University of Colorado Law School, sponsored by its Silicon Flatirons program. Liberty Media executive Michael Zeisser gave what I thought was an insightful talk, “15 Years of Consumer Internet Industry: What (if anything) have we learned?”

Zeisser, who is an acquisitions expert for Liberty Media specializing in identifying established consumer Internet companies with long-term futures, is a “student of the Internet.” Among his principal observations is that about every THREE YEARS, there is a major paradigm shift within the Internet industry that often topples the existing industry leaders and replaces them with new companies that can better leverage the new technology paradigm. A new emerging technology sweeps onto the scene to dominate the Internet industry, setting the unprepared companies from the previous paradigm on a downward spiral. To hear Zeisser describe it, the Internet industry is a very tough one to survive in for long.

If you consider that technology companies tend to move quickly, especially in comparison to news and media companies, you can understand why the latter have had so much trouble adapting to the digital age over the last decade and a half: The ground keeps shifting under their feet!

To my mind, one of the most important things you can do as a journalist, news-industry leader, or journalism academic is work to understand the emerging technologies that are heading your way, about to upset your industry and field once again.

I look forward to your answers to my question, and the ensuing discussion!

(this post comes to us from Michael Rosenblum – host of January 2012!)

For the past month I have been serving as acting ‘ringmaster’ for Dave Cohn’s travelling roadshow – The Carnival of Journalism.

Each ‘ringmaster’ is invited to pose a question to the group.  My question was ‘Can a good journalist also be a good capitalist?” If so, how? Or why not?’

Now the answers are in.

“Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one”

The New Yorker’s AJ Liebling had it right – in the 1950s.

Owning a press (or a TV network) was extremely expensive.

Getting access to people’s homes was impossible without the massive investment that a press or a TV station required. So freedom of the press was for the very rich and the very few. The rest of us were left with the option of working for the rich few or opting out of journalism.

Then, only a few years ago, the whole technological applecart got overturned. Suddenly, with the web, it became possible for anyone to ‘publish’ whatever they wanted and put their message into quite literally billions of homes worldwide at no cost.

I was curious as to whether journalists collectively could seize on the opportunities offered by these revolutionary new technologies to free themselves from the Journalism Plantation – (we own it, you work here).

Dave’s followers represent a pretty good spectrum of thinking in the world of journalism.  For the most part, Massa Sulzberger has little to fear.

Let’s take The New York Times, just an example.

What is The Times but the cumulative quality of the work of the writers?

Suppose Tom Friedman, Nick Kristoff, Maureen Dowd and the rest of them all got together in the cafeteria one afternoon and said ‘why are we here in this building? Why are we turning over our work to Arthur Jr. and his family when it is ours to sell? What does he bring to the party?”  The answer is, not much. If the Times staff decided to start their own website and own it themselves, where would you go for your morning read? The Sulzbergers used to own the press machine. But today that’s a museum piece.

This is the potential power to OWN the machine that the new technology offers.  The question is, why won’t the journos simply take it?

The responses to the question give a lot of insight.

Some people mistook ‘making money’ for ‘owning the means of production’.  Some wrote, ‘Bill O’Reilly and Barbara Walters make a lot of money”. This is true, but they are still employees.

Others suggested that the future of journalism free of the dirty business of making money lay  in no profits, NPR or not for profit journalism.

Overall though, the general reaction was still one of a feeling of a distinct separation between the purity of ‘journalism’ and the less and pure business of ‘business’.

Denise Cheng (@dennetmint) was first in with the comment:

“as a fellow Jcarny, I agree that it does not have to be repugnant. It’s something no person and no organization can do without, especially if they want to scale to better serve the community. Separating business from journalism is not an option, so maybe we need to shift our view: If we embrace capital and spend time figuring out how to do it better, then the time we have to do what we naturally do well—the craft, community engagement—will be optimized.”

She’s headed for Jarvis’ CUNY program this year.

Danielle Frankhauser was so quick off the mark that she emailed me her comments directly:

“Diamonds are created by pressure (a popular analogy). I think great innovation needs the kind of pressure that comes only from something powerful like cash flow. It’s one of those things, like religion and politics, that we’re not supposed to talk about at cocktail parties. It hits us deep in our psyche.”

Dave Cohn, who clearly is an entrepreneurial journalist responded that it’s a pretty mixed bag:

“But one of the professors at the Cronkite J-school gathering asked a very important and a totally fair question. I’m paraphrasing here: ‘

I know it’s a real path, but it can’t be all butterfly’s and kittens. What are the tradeoffs? What are the hard parts of going down this route? I don’t want to send off students without a healthy dose of reality.’

Sometimes those of us who have drank the entrepreneurial Kool-Aid like to point out success stories and perks without mentioning just what you have to give up to go this route.”

Jack Rosenberry cut to the core of the question:

“the essay seems to be conflating the idea of “capitalist” to “person who earns a sufficient level of income” and from there sets up a false divide. In a formal sense, the capitalist is the owner of the means of production; certainly the various press barons mentioned earlier were that. They were also journalists in that as publishers they helped establish — or flat-out dictated — the editorial direction for their newspapers. And in filling the dual role they made LOTS of money.”

Adam Westbrook checked in from London. Adam is also an entrepreneurial journalist and his perspective was similar to Dave’s.  ”

It’s not for everyone I know, but personally, I would love to see more journalists & publishers – especially young ones – breaking free while they can, simply because so many of the hurdles have been removed. And as I’ve said beforethis window of opportunity won’t last forever.

Michael is right in lots of ways – but he misses an important point. Yes, journalists shouldn’t shy away from making big bucks. But to do so, you have to be motivated by something more than money.

Martin Belam was uncertain as to whether a good journalist should be a good capitalist.  Wrote Marty:

But no journalist worth their salt wouldn’t write about a plane falling out of the sky on their hometown because it happened on a Thursday, and Thursday is the day you’ve set aside to phone local businesses to drum up ad revenue.

I think you have to ask yourself, do you get out of bed in the morning with a burning hunger to find and uncover stories, or do you get out of bed in the morning hungry to make sales?

I’m unconvinced that you can do both.

Fair enough. Although (fortunately) planes don’t fall out of the sky every day, but I take his point.

Mary Hamilton took us back to this initial question of character. Is it in our nature not to be entrepreneurs?

Many journalists don’t want to be – aren’t cut out to be – technical or technological innovators, or freelancers chasing clients for cash. Some of us love digital production and want nothing more than to be playing with new ways to tell stories. Others want nothing but to be allowed to get on with their important investigatons, or their war films, or their pithy columns. I am unequivocably in favour of journalists learning new skills in order to do their jobs more efficiently and more effectively – but when it comes to demanding they move away from their specialism and into areas they may not enjoy or be good at, I get a little uncomfortable. Not everyone can or should be a jack of all trades.

Alfred Hermida makes the point that

There has always been an entrepreneurial streak in journalism, typified in the freelance journalist who makes a living by pitching and selling their work to a range of clients.

Journalists, by necessity, have to be entrepreneurial in finding and chasing stories.

The shift today is in the product and process of entrepreneurial journalism.

Andrew Zaleski seems to get to the point that I was striving for:

No, what I think we’re really talking about is how journalists can sufficiently leverage their collective power to create economies of scale that are similarly powerful to the big guys. You know: Hearst, Gannett, Tribune, Conde Nast.

Exactly.

Carrie Brown, who teaches at the University of Memphis (and seems surprised that Columbia J-School could be so backward – that’s the NYC

myth’ blown away) writes (and in bold):

Being SKEPTICAL about money and its power to corrupt good journalism is a different thing. I think that is perfectly healthy.

Gary Kebbel, from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln says that they are already teaching entrepreneurial journalism at his school:

We want the center to be a model for how to teach entrepreneurial skills like audience analysis, market analysis, business planning, multidisciplinary cooperation, teamwork and evaluation.

Nick Leamon, take note!!

Geoff Samak makes the point that journalists require a ‘different perspective’ on their world to do their job, and that perspective might serve them well as journalists, but not necessarily as Capitalists.

AO Scruggs in his first contribution to the Carnival notes:

Many of us got into journalism because we loved telling stories, especially about stuff folks weren’t supposed to know. We liked seeing our byline or hearing our voices. We liked being in the mix. But the environment that feeds a modern-day Pulitzer starves a content creator.

Meanwhile, Steve Fox, at U Mass was unimpressed by the whole topic.

Haven’t we spent enough time asking what journalists can and can’t do?

Haven’t we spent enough time asking what the definition of journalism is?

Seriously, enough already.

Dulai Shaminder seems read to join the revolution:

And my friends, we’ve all drank the Kool-Aid. I’m just as guilty as you. My first job I lost money (no gas reimbursement), my second job I used my own equipment and paid for my own repairs, at another job I spent months eating $0.08 Ramen noodles on my entry level salery with unpaid overtime– and I did it all with pride.

I’m not in it for the money, I’m in it to inform and help people have a voice. And I was proud of the work I was doing, I still am, but I romanticized the ideal of the broke journalist falsely.

Kathy Gill on the other hand, goes to the other end of the spectrum:

Making money should be our primary goal? Really? (I call “embracing” something making it a primary goal.)

Making money your priority in life is a route destined to dead-end in the cul de sac of unhappiness. It’s not great as a reason for starting a business, either.

This ignores my favorite quote from Sophie Tucker “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me, honey, rich is better.” But that’s another story…

Jonathan Groves responded:

The problem with the question as stated is we’ve seen what the profit motive can do to journalism. It led to the yellow journalism of the late 19th century, when stories were fabricated and sensationalized for the sake of sales. Indeed, the Christian Science Monitor and the Missouri School of Journalism were created and the New York Times evolved under Adolph Ochs as responses to the market-driven journalism of the day.

They were pursuing a greater goal, a greater journalism beyond profits.

As a former president of New York Times Company who had to report profits and losses to the Board every month, I can tell you that this vision is a bit romanticized, to say the least.

Clarissa Morales Roberts heads back to the relative safety of non-profit, the very antithesis of good capitalism:

What I found in my review was that the basis of Capitalism is economic gain that benefits the individual above all others.  The public good or nutritional value are irrelevant. And this is contrary to the fundamentals of what I believe good journalism to be: information that engages the public to participate for the betterment of society. If we are only about personal gain, then statutes like do no harm have no place in our profession, and that’s something I personally wouldn’t be able to stomach.

 

Sue Robinson at MediaTrope: does find a way where good journalists can be good capitalists. It’s all about discipline:

“As I tell my students now, the key to being a good journalist working at a for-profit company is time management, creative interpretations of corporate mandates such as “bulk! bulk! bulk!,” alternative kinds of story formats, agnostic understandings of platform, disciplined efforts around storytelling, and finally, laser focus on the end goal of significant and important democracy-improving work in one’s day-to-day labor.”

And finally, Erika Owens also hearkens to this notion that pure capitalism is at loggerheads with good community journalism:

What is the purpose in media making? If you want community contributors to be invested in your work, what are you asking them to invest in?

So where did this leave me in my question as to whether we (the Journalists) can re-arrange ourselves to work in a different way that is more profitable for us by owning the business instead of being the employees.

Hmm….

I tend to think that 150 years of being employees has formed a great deal of our thinking.  Most people seemed to feel that being a good journalist and running and owning a successful journalism business are either difficult or perhaps inherently impossible.  This, of course, is not my opinion (and the opinions stated here in no way reflect those of the Carnival of Journalism, Dave Cohn or anyone else).

But…..

150 years of daily experience is hard to shake.

When the Israelites left Egypt they didn’t wander in the desert for forty years because they were lost.

They wandered in the desert for forty years so that anyone with the memory of slavery would die off before they went into the promised land.

Perhaps in forty years we can re-raise this issue.

In the meantime, the Sulzbergers can rest comfortably.

On the other hand, anyone who wants to storm the NBC building, meet me at midnight.

**** and this late entry, just in, from Jonathan Frost

And – THE JUST IN – this super late entry by Lauren Rabaino.

She says (and since she agrees with me..):

So, can a journalist can be a capitalist?

1. Yes, even though the traditional structure of legacy media doesn’t openly welcome or encourage it.
2. Yes, if we care about the future of open information and democracy.
3. Yes, because we’re positioned to do it best, as we’re the ones who know the content and the readers — something hard to initiate, as we haven’t been trained to innovate or make money.

In his post he asks: “Can a good journalist also be a good capitalist?” If so, how? Or why not?

The content of his full post is below. But the heart of the prompt is above.

Due Date: Friday January 27th at Noon PST.

You can publish anytime over the weekend and then we’ll do a classic Carnival Round-Up post.

How to Make Millions as a Journalist by Michael Rosenblum.

I am writing today’s blog in conjunction with the Carnival of Journalism , Dave Cohn’s ongoing journalism project.
If you feel like participating, please do.

The issue I wanted to write about for some time is Journalism and Capitalism – or “Why We Can’t Seem To Make a Living”.
The Carnival Of Journalism requires a question to which everyone responds, so my question is:
Can a good journalist also be a good capitalist?

Jeff Jarvis, much to his credit, recently launched the Center for Entreprenurial Journalism at CUNY.  And bravo Jeff!
The world of journalism needs more thinking like this.

Alas, there is an instinctive aversion to the idea of making money amongst most  journalists.

On the heels of attending one of Jarvis’ classes in Entrepreneurial Journalism, I was so impressed, I went to see Nick Lemann, the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, my alma mater, and a place I had taught for 8 years as an adjunct.

Lemann was aghast at my suggestion and practically physically recoiled.  This, alas, is all too typical for the ‘professional journalist’.  We instinctively associate making money with ‘evil’.  We like to investigate it. If someone is making a ton of money, then they must be doing something wrong.

“Follow the money” says Deep Throat to Woodward and Bernstein.

As a member of the generation that was inspired by Woodward and Bernstein, let me amend that.  ”Follow the money, figure out what they are doing and how you can make even more”.

I like that one better.

Making money is no crime. In fact, it is the ulimate good. With money you can do stuff.  Without it, you are the perpetual victim and the perpetual employee, which is what most journalists are.  And that is crazy.

Listen, the Internet ‘happened’ to our industry first – the information industry.  That’s what the web was all about – the gathering and the processing and the distribution of information. That was and is our business.

So we should have been out there first, cleaning up.  We should own the web. But we don’t.  We let it get away from us because we never saw ourselves as Capitalist.  We let ourselves get pounded.

Craigslist, which pretty much eviscerated newspapers classifieds should have been developed and owned by us.
Google – all the news that fit to print – and a whole lot more – should have been developed and owned by us.
Youtube, Facebook, you name it.  We should be exploiting this mother for all she is worth.  But we don’t.

We are the perpetual groveling employees, beggaring for a few crumbs and generally seeing our jobs and incomes slashed as the web and new digital technologies roll over the old.

And why is that?
Why are we such schmucks?

It’s in our nature.  It’s in the image that we have made for ourselves.

“My job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afficted” says Peter Finley Dunne.

Crap!, I say.  Crap.

Who came up with this idea?

What is the crime in making money? In making lots of it?

Anyone who became a journalist could just as easily have become a lawyer.

Lawyers work for the ‘good of mankind’, but they don’t seem to attach any stigma to making a lot of money.

And they’re equally happy to defend human rights and the Constitution and help the poor and a whole lot of other stuff without feeling like they have to live in perpetual poverty for the rest of their lives.

Look at how we present ourselves to the world.  Look at the image of the typical ‘journalist’ in the movies.

Russel Crowe, journalist in “State of Play”.

Look at him.

Drunken stumble bum.
Bad clothes
Unshaven
Messy
Bad haircut
Bad car
Crap life

And he’s the hero!!!

What is the matter with us???

Is this a guy who is going to Goldman Sachs for an IPO?
Is any Venture Capital firm going to invest in him??

Not a chance.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

And how do we tolerate the crap way we are treated by our ‘employers’?
Bust your butt for The New York Times or NBC for 25 years and what do you get?
A luncheon!

Bust your butt for a NY law firm for 25 years and what do you get?
A partnership!

Do you see any journalists being offered partnerships in The New York Times Company???

We are a mess.
But we are not beyond redemption.
We can change.
We have to get our act together.

We have to embrace making money – lots and lots of money – as a good. As a goal.

We should arrange ourselves the way lawyers do, as limited partnerships.  Then some of the partners can carry on with their ‘investigative journalism’ while the others engage in more lucrative PR or Image Control and others launch web-related IPOs.

And instead of ‘working for’ the NY Times or NBC, we should simply license our work to them.  For a fee.

I read a lot about the ‘dire situation’ that journalism is facing, but to me, the only ‘dire situation’ is the way that we have chosen to arrange ourselves.

Journalists of the world, arise. You have nothing to lose.

Nothing at all, apparently.

This month’s Carnival of journalism saw bloggers tackling a two-pronged question, appropriate to both the season and being hosted on a Developer blog:

If you are a journalist, what would be the best present from programmers and developers that Santa Claus could leave under your Christmas tree? And, correspondingly, if you are a programmer or developer, what would be the best present from journalism that Father Christmas could deliver down your chimney?

Aside from some dissent about the the Christmas slant, the either/or stance of the question was legitimately challenged by Heather Billings. “How many times do programmers have to prove they can be journalists, and vice versa?” she asked.

Content management systems loomed large in people’s wishes. Daniel Bentley yearns for “an open source content management system that doesn’t suck.” Kathy Gill wants Santa to “put someone other than IT in charge of all CMS purchases.”

A couple of people wanted more semantic mark-up, but Jacob Caggiano identified one common problem in the semantic web space – “overlapping projects that don’t play nice with each other due to individual political interests that result in frustration for the average user.”

Andrew Zaleski pleased me by pointing out that “the problems of large-scale information architecture for news sites are really hard problems.” Don’t I know it. His wish was for a system that would help editors deliver news websites that retained the clear information hierarchy associated with print products, rather than the often messy list views that we end up with today.

Jonathan Frost at Wannabehacks also warmed my heart by concluding that “User experience should be the next big thing in journalism and development. Don’t leave the designer out in the snow.”

Donica had a great idea for a useful resource, a “a go-to-wiki that includes a directory of all the cool tools developers are making that relate to journalism, with links to examples, how-to guides and user comments.” Nicola Hughes, meanwhile, made her post into a cartoon strip, and Paul Bradshaw made a fascinating wish list.

Patrick Thornton asked for there to be more appreciation of technology amongst journalists – but added a note of caution:

An appreciation for tech skills and developers doesn’t mean chasing the latest buzzwords. In fact, watching many news organizations chasing trends instead of meaningful innovation leads me to believe that there isn’t a healthy enough appreciation for technology in newsroom. There simply aren’t enough people in newsrooms with the skills to know what is worth pursuing and what isn’t.

And finally, out of the things that particularly caught my eye, the Guardian’s own Mary Hamilton appealed to the supernatural powers of Santa – “Please bring us all more time“:

In an age of cutting costs, one of the most precious resources we have left is our time. Anything that saves it, that means it can be spent doing journalism or making tools that journalists can use is a wonderful thing.

December’s “Carnival of journalism” blog posts

Here is (I think) a complete list of those taking part:

Alfred Hermida: The role of technology in journalism
Andre Natta: A #jcarn holiday wish for journalists – help us show relevance
Andrew Zalesky: Programmers, here’s what I want
Clarisa Clarity: Is it crap or craptastick?
Daniel Bentlet: Dear Journalism Santa, I want a CMS that doesn’t suck
David Cohn: If this works – it will be a Google+ public update and automatically create my December Contribution to the Carnival of Journalism on my personal blog
Donica: JournalismPress
Heather Billings: I see what you did there
Jack D. Lail: Just surprise me
Jon Offredo: The Jobseeker’s journo wish list
Jonathan Frost: All I want for Christmas
Kathy Gill: What I want for Christmas
Martin Belam: Presents for all!
Mary Hamilton: Dear Santa, please bring us all more time
Nicola Hughes: Journalist versus Programmer
Patrick Thornton: Journalism needs more journalists that appreciate programming and technology
Paul Bradshaw: Tools or Tales?
Jacob Caggiano: All I want for Christmas is Semantic Metadata
Steve Outing: Carnivals and holiday trees, for journalists and technologists

Geoff Samek: Why ask why?

The Guardian Developer blog is going to be hosting December’s “Carnival of journalism.” Once a month a group of people interested in the future of journalism get together and write blog posts about the same topic, chosen by a different host each time. Previous topics have included using new tools and gadgets, the role of online video in the newsroom, Google+ and a carnival of #fail.

How does it work?

You can join the Carnival of Journalism by filling out this form. Or have a look at the Google Group. Simply write and publish a blog post on the stated deadline on the topic proposed, and let us know about it by leaving a comment below. We’ll then feature you in round-up blog post the week after the deadline, also on this blog.

THE TOPIC

With it being December, we thought we would adopt a Christmas theme for this month’s topic – and pick something, in keeping with being hosted by a Developer blog, that we could ask of both technologists and journalists.

If you are a journalist, what would be the best present from programmers and developers that Santa Claus could leave under your Christmas tree?

And, correspondingly, if you are a programmer or developer, what would be the best present from journalism that Father Christmas could deliver down your chimney?

Carnival day next month is going to be Friday 9 December – so get thinking about the topic, publish your blog post on the day, and pop a link into the comments below.

This month’s Carnival of Journalism was hosted by Bryan Murley takes us on a tour of a truly frightful house of promise and peril: the world of new gadgets and software tools.

To refresh your memory, the prompt for this month was:

How do you decide to dedicate time to a new tool/platform/gadget? What is the process you go through mentally? And then later – how do you convince others to go through that process? And, last: How do you ensure that the tools you do adopt are used once the “newness” factor fades?

Without further delay, here are some of the responses (links open in new tabs):

Alfred Hermida writes, “The starting point for this discussion is the public, not the tools. Talking about tools is the last thing we should be doing..”

Joe Gullo looks for “the community factor” for new software tools, but says the results are often lackluster: “The hardest part is sticking with the product. It could be the most amazing service or product, but something has to keep me going back and using it.”

Dave Cohn makes an important distinction when evaluating any new tool: “Most platforms/tools/gadgets are tactical – not strategic. You should always keep your strategy in mind so that you can evaluate a tool about whether or not it’s helping to achieve that final goal.”

Carrie Brown focuses on the “evangelism” part of the question, and gives a list of ways to help others see the advantages of new things. This is important for college j-students, especially. “Contrary to popular belief, many of these so-called “digital natives” are often neither savvy about new tech nor exceptionally eager to go beyond their Facebook and Internet Explorer (?!) comfort zones.”

Lauren Rabaino walks through the process and provides examples of the best tools: “The best tools are the ones that solve a coverage  problem or put a significant twist on already-existing storytelling tools. Sometimes — and these are my favorite kind of tools — you stumble upon one that fills a huge need that you didn’t even realize you had.”

Jonathan Groves explains how he decides what products to stick with, providing examples along the way. As for convincing others? His approach is slightly different. Click the link to read it. “What’s important is that we choose what best fits us, not everyone else.”

Stijn Debrouwere makes his first appearance in the carnival this month (welcome!). In his post, he posits some fountational reasons why journalists don’t adopt new tools: “our industry is slowly amassing an unsettling amount of cargo cult behaviors: we’re imitating a 20th-century writing style and ethical code without the first idea about how these contribute to journalism that is informative, engaging and fair.”

Jack Lail reiterates that, although it’s painful, “… experiment you must, lest you end up still using a 14,400 baud model and Windows 98 for the rest of your, indeed, wretched life.”

Andrew Zaleski, another new carnivore, explains “Ultimately, I stick to one governing principle when it comes to social media: how will the respective tool improve (and make easier) my work as digital media editor for Urbanite magazine?”

If you’re anywhere near up to date on technology, you know that there are new tools popping up constantly – hardware, software, apps and social media tools.

You probably have more web-based software log-ins than you care to admit.

Some of these new tools are useful for journalists. Some are just interesting playthings. So here is the prompt for my fellow Carnivores, a process question, with four parts:

How do you decide to dedicate time to a new tool/platform/gadget? What is the process you go through mentally? And then later – how do you convince others to go through that process? And, last: How do you ensure that the tools you do adopt are used once the “newness” factor fades?

I’m looking forward to reading how other journalists and journalism educators are tackling this particular stream from the information fire hydrant.

Everyone’s welcome to participate. If you’re not familiar, you can join the group and read more here. Simply write your answer in the form of a blog post on your own blog, and send me a link to the post via the Google Group, or add a link to the comments here.

Deadline for entries is Friday, Oct. 28 at midnight (ahoooo!). The roundup will be posted Monday, Oct. 31. Those who don’t participate will be shuttled off to Dr. Tongue’s Evil House of Pancakes for punishment.

It was my pleasure to host this month’s Carnival of Journalism (and was almost as rewarding as that year I judged an apple pie contest).

Just as appetizing was this month’s Carnival of Journalism question:  What is the role of online video in the newsroom of the future?

More than twenty posts were filed by deadline, and the more I read, the more I was convinced: There is no single, clear-cut answer on the future of video.  But there are some compelling ideas.

I’ve grouped the responding blog posts into a number of categories for easy reading.  After touching on the economics of digital video, we’ll explore the medium and content, look at views from some skeptics and the more bullish, and wrap-up with some “big think” pieces.

THE BUSINESS SIDE

So we’ll begin with the strikingly titled post The Future of News Video Looks Like Crap.  Abraham Hyatt, managing editor of ReadWriteWeb, thinks the future looks like it was shot on camera phones:

… [T]he drift towards low-quality video is an inarguable and inescapable trend, one that stems from the basic principle of supply and demand.

He also takes a look at advertorials as a possible, if not depressing, solution for some sites until the real money flows in.

Enough with the 30-second pre-roll ads, writes Kathy Gill in her 5 Tips:

Insist that the commercials you run be developed specifically for online video. This means that they need to be short! A 30-second commercial is a lifetime online. Moreover, if I want to rewind – watch the clip again – don’t make me sit through the commercial a second time.

Joe Gullo, a broadcast journalism student at SUNY Plattsburgh, views subscriptions as a possible revenue source:

Access to video content on news sites will also change. Consumers will either be charged per video news story or pay a flat fee.

THE MEDIUM

Dave Cohn (he of @digidave fame, not to mention Spot.us, U.C. Berkeley and some #JCarn thing) focused on the medium, as opposed to the content:

Hangouts/Skype and group video will mean the death of the talk show. When the Internet and television collide, which will inevitably happen, the talking head show as we know it will be displaced. A site like BloggingHeads.tv will be viewed as way ahead of its time.

Franzi Bährle is a working videojournalist in Germany and believes in the craft:

Not only because of cutting costs but also because of their flexibility and a motto, which is often linked to videojournalism: “Go out and find a story.”

Video as verification is the message behind this post from Jonathan Grove, assistant professor at Drury University in Springfield, Mo.:

It’s complementary content that provides another layer of verifiable evidence for users. It builds trust and credibility. And it includes users in the journalistic process.

Hans Meyer over at Ohio University is on the same page.  He’s conducting an experiment on the credibility an on-camera reporter brings to a news story.  Many sites abandon that TV model in favor of letting subjects tell their own tale.

My first question was if this is a product of the medium. Is connecting the audience to the video’s source more important on the Internet than in other media?

Looking forward to his results and, as he notes, what connection it may have to the YouTube-ing of our culture.

CONTENT

There is a disappointing lack of innovation in newsrooms, reports Sue Robinson, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She offered a hearty post that includes her suggestions:

I’d like to see more video used to corroborate stories, showing snippets of telling pieces of the interview, for example. I’d like to see more reader-produced video commentary attached to stories as part of the forums and comments or somehow integrated more significantly.

Her list goes on (“obnoxious” as she calls it; “forward-looking” as I call it) to include user experience changes that shouldn’t be too far off.  She also brought up again the New York Times tooth-brushing companion news delivery system.

Dani Fankhauser, of FLUD, calls out your humble moderator right away and astutely reframes the issue:

First, I’m rather offended that the title of this carnival limits to online video because I think mobile news video is a much bigger trend. I’m going to refer to both, and call it digital video here.

(For the record, I totally agree.)  She goes on to tackle what a new model might look like with “journalist as producer.“

SHOOTING AND STORYTELLING

The great @Fuzheado, Andrew Lih, answers the original question with a question:

Why is learning (and teaching) video so hard for journalists?

The USC Annenberg professor is developing a step-by-step tutorial using an iPad to both teach and shoot:

In this way, the camera is no longer just a capture device, but an instructional device, providing direction and feedback to the operator to learn visual literacy by “doing.”

Meanwhile, Alfred Hermida weighs in from the University of British Columbia to remind journalists that decisions should be made on what is the best way to tell a story:

Best practices of online video are evolving. It is not just about giving all your reporters a Flip cam and asking them to shot some video.

His post, chock full of examples, also outlines five different types of online news video.

Videojournalist Lam Thuy Vo built upon the idea of news video categorization and offers a system based on deadlines, because:

It’s difficult to determine which kind of video to do when. Ideally, we’d all be spending weeks with a character at a time to produce a nice 15-minute first-person narrative, but that’s not always possible. And not every editor wants to pay for that.

SKEPTICISM

There are some who expressed their concerns about video.  Tiffany Johnson used the comfort of our Google group to make a confession: She’s got a short attention span, so online video just doesn’t do it for her:

I think predictions that video will soon infiltrate every aspect of our lives Farenheit 451-style are unlikely. Video has a time and place on a news website, but the medium is still hamstrung by the fact that videos are impractical.

Benet Wilson, of Aviation Week, writes on the NABJdigital Blog that she was drowning in Betamax tapes in the 80′s when she decided to paddle toward print journalism.  She has since embraced much of the digital journalism world, but it still comes down to two questions for her:

[O]ne, is there enough demand — by viewers and sponsors/advertisers — to justify the expense of creating and posting videos; and two, is there enough time in the day for our editors to learn how to shoot video and use Final Cut Pro to produce packages that are good enough to go up on the web?

BULLISH

Others remain optimistic.  Jack Lail of the Knoxville News Sentinel pulls together studies on the habits of the next generation media consumers:

These media savvy youth also want more than video. They want to the multiplatform experience newspapers have been developing skills and expertise around. Newspaper sites have lots of words, lots of great photography and a growing amount of video. These seem to be critical advantages in attracting this young audience of news consumers.

And to accomplish that, video has to be in a newsroom’s DNA, he says.  (Bonus points for being the only person to include part of his response IN THE FORM OF A VIDEO!)

Donica Mensing, of the University of Nevada Reno, agrees with others that moving images are overtaking the printed word, and thus:

…[W]e are in the throes of a much larger shift in communication than newsrooms can contain or manage. The transition is happening. Newsrooms will adapt or they will shrink, morph or disappear.

Video, she points out, “is inherently more social than printed words.”

Michael Rosenblum was the only person who did what I feared: He assumed that my posing this discussion question was a cry for professional help.  (I assure you it’s not, but thank you.) He also discussed his vision of “screenworld” and:

The very fact that we continue to differentiate between text and video in a newsroom makes me think that newspapers are even more dead than I thought they were.   We are living in a digital world.

BIG PICTURE

Finally, some offer “big think” pieces.  Michael Morisy introduces us to the idea of the Subservient Congress and lessons we could have learned from Burger King a decade ago:

The future of online news video is a more integrated, playful medium that stops thinking in terms of play, pause and pageviews and instead engages in ways that are more educational, more engaging and more immersive than today’s simple Flip Cam renditions.

He pivots on this theme:

But among the rank and file, true transformation hasn’t occurred: What would simply be impossible or, better yet, incomprehensible to online news videos’ ancestors?

You’ll have to read the post to get his answer.

Bryan Murley, associate professor for new and emerging media at Eastern Illinois University, included this line in his post:

I am not a video triumphalist. But I am a video realist.

His perspective is based on the fact that video is inherently linear, and therefore, not easily scannable.  It’s a great point about how video differs so greatly from print.  He adds:

[W]hen I stumble upon a video on the web, the first thing I will usually check is the description, the title of the video. This is text. I will use that text to determine whether I want to spend precious time viewing the video in question. Occasionally, I’ll click “Play” and let the video roll for a few seconds. All of this is a means for me to judge the value of the video content vis a vis my time.

I notice similar information consumption habits among students. They will spend loads of time scanning their Facebook “News Feed” to gather information. They are scanning text. Only when they find something recommended by a friend will they click onto a video and watch. If they like it, they will continue watching. If they don’t, they’ll click onto something else.

Read the whole thing to see how he notes that video will, of course, still be important.

And in Seattle, Lauren Rabaino (she of 10,000 Words and Seattle Times fame) puts video into the larger context of journalism innovation over the past decade or so, before diving into this nugget:

Often times, newspapers fall into the middle ground [between cat videos and well-produced content]. They’re not usually shooting the real-life raw footage of natural disasters, but they’re not producing amazing, high-quality works of art. They’re that middle noise; the five-minute mediocre footage. And often times, they precede their mediocre video with a 30-second ad. This isn’t where I see the future.

She proceeds by laying out how she does see the future, and again, you should just read the post.

Heck, you should read all the posts.  I must say, they’re all top-notch.  And they all still convince me that we’re not entirely sure what the future looks like – which is thrilling! – and that we think video exists in a large way, which I find reassuring.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, Carnival-goers, I’ve got to get back to this 1992 video about how “social networks” might be a thing in the future.  I think they’re on to something…

***

I’m excited to host this month’s Carnival of Journalism around one key area of interest: the future of online video news.

Traditional newsrooms have had, in many ways, a complicated relationship with video:

*  Television networks and local stations. The broadcast side of the business brings in significantly more money than online video–a disparity which often influences staffing and workflow decisions.

*  Newspapers.  The written word has trumped other online content for decades.  Many have expanded by adding video journalists.  Their struggle is, how to incorporate video coverage into legacy workflows.

Full disclosure: I’m working at one of those “newspapers” in Washington, D.C.  This #jcarn is related to that work only in that I’m interested in the topic of online news video as a whole.

Google+ is only two months old but because it launched in a real-time web era, and it already had mind-share and a robust user base (gmail), its adoption rate has surpassed the digital social network spaces that came before it. Thus my Carnival of Journalism question for August: What does Google+ mean for journalists, today and tomorrow?

Here’s our consensus: journalists need to experiment with social spaces and tools, even though it’s a time-consuming exercise; Google+ has potential as a platform for conversation and collaboration; and Google’s real names policy is problematic.

Benet J. Wilson, DJTF chairman, online managing editor, Business Aviation, Aviation Week Group (from vacation!), on collaboration:

I got on in July, created a few circles…then did nothing…But then I found an interesting use — live blogging an event… I created the circle NABJ 2011 and used this blog, Facebook and Twitter to let folks know I would be live blogging the meeting using Google+.

I found Google+ to be a great tool. I could post as much — or as little — information as I wanted, not constrained by a 140-character limit. Since it was live, folks could — and did — follow along in and out, but they could also go back to the stream later. And they could post questions directly to the circle that I could answer in real time, or chase down a board member to get the proper answer.

I could see journalists using Google+ for a similar use, like covering a community or city council meeting. The notes taken could be used as part of a summary blog post or even a story. And the interactive feature can allow journalists to get questions from circle members they may not have thought of.

Bryan Murley, assistant professor of new and emerging media in the journalism department at Eastern Illinois University, on Circles:

I do like the way Google Plus lets you put people into Circles. I can see this being useful for a journalist once more people adopt the platform (assuming that they do). Also, for an educator, it can be a useful way to organize students into classes – intro to journalism, for instance – and then feed information only to those circles. In this particular feature, Google Plus distances itself from Facebook.

And on Hangouts:

This could be useful for a journalism instructor to host a webchat with professionals around the world so that students could interact with several professionals from the local classroom. For a student journalist, it could be a good way to conduct an interview with a subject who’s not easily accessible for an in-person interview (taking the place of the phone interview).

Carrie Brown-Smith, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Memphis, experiments despite social media fatigue:

If Web 2.0 has taught us nothing else, it is that we have to go where our audience is, and we can’t wait until after these sites become behemoths – better to get in early and start building credibility now. But I think the jury is still out on how important Google+ will be and how active journalists need to be there.

[And yet] my first reaction was a sense of powerful fatigue at having yet another space to monitor and contribute to. When people whine to me about how social media is too time intensive, I usually tell them too bad and suck it up – it’s too important not to make time for. But for once I too was overwhelmed, and I think journalists who feel utterly exhausted by it have a legitimate beef, especially in this time where they are being asked to do so much with so much less. To make a new network worth the time, it’s really got to offer something exciting. And for me, I didn’t quite get that from Google+.

David Cohn, writer, entrepreneur (Spot.us) and Carnival instigator, reminds us that early adopters are different:

The real lesson here is that journalists on Google+ should keep in mind how they are using the platform and how the public might be using the platform. The two aren’t necessarily the same and all-too often we think the rest of the world uses web technology the same way we do…

The reason to be on Google+ isn’t because it’s the newest, hottest, sexiest thing… You should be on these sites to understand how people are communicating and the vocabulary of this communication. Friendster informed MySpace which informed Facebook which informed Google+. If you ignore these sites you will fail to understand how a growing portion of the population deals with the flow of information and inevitably how more people will deal with this flow in the future.

Jack Lail, multimedia editor for the Knoxville News Sentinel, delves into the real names war:

Prior to Google+’s launch, there had been a growing chorus against anonymity for comments on news sites. Long-time blogger and Internet figure Anil Dash may have come up with the best headline: IF YOUR WEBSITE’S FULL OF ASSHOLES, IT’S YOUR FAULT…

Some sites have switched to requiring Facebook authentication to comments, some are using Facebook’s commenting system, and the voices of editors and journalists and others railing against acerbic anonymous comments have grown louder.

Whether it was meant to include article comments or not, the debate over real names on Google+ has brought some focused, thoughtful discussion around the subject… I’m hopeful that some of the suggestions and guidelines recommended by Joy Mayer get fully discussed by editors and newsrooms and in a Google+ circle for that matter.

Finally, I weigh in on the #nymwars but also highlight ways faculty and journalists might use the service (with tips, too):

In the intervening month since I pitched the topic, the bloom has faded from the rose a quite bit for me due toGoogle’s inexplicable heels-dug-in behavior regarding its “real names” policy. I think Google is wrong, and I believe that the service has lost both goodwill and momentum due to the manner (to call it uneven is being kind) in which the policy has been implemented…

If journalists are using Google+ as a form of environmental monitoring (and they should be!), then a logical first step is to set up circles based on known sources. Read the posts and comments and use comments as a way to identify new sources. If you want to try-before-you-buy, then set up a circle for “commenters” (and, perhaps, “sharers”) and place people there on a probationary basis, moving them to a trusted circle later. Alternatively, look at public posts and make a judgment based on what you can see; recognize that you can’t see limited share posts, however. (But you can see if that person has already put you in a circle.)

If journalists are using Google+ as a form of content sharing or information gathering, then those posts should probably be public rather than restricted to a circle. A post that has been restricted cannot be reshared publicly.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and if the pluses of the system (no pun intended) outweigh the commercial motivation underpinning Google’s “real names” (otherwise known as an “identity service”) policy. Given Google’s decision to privilege Google+ profiles in search, journalists should be setting up shop there even if they don’t plan to hang around very much.