The Most exciting time in Journalism

I had more than one family member tell me four years ago that newspapers were dying – why enter a field that is on its way out? My one uncle on my dad’s side was particularly worried about me. How was I going to make a living?

Well, I wish he could hear (or read) Laura Frank’s graduation speech for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Frank has nearly 20 years of experience in newspapers, radio and public television. She has won awards in print and broadcast, and helped release innocent people from prison. A journalism student herself, and executive director of I-News, Frank has kept herself busy in a field that is supposedly dying. But most importantly of all, she claims it is the most exciting time in journalism.

“Never have we had the ability to both gather information as quickly, precisely and reliably – or disseminate it as rapidly or widely – as we do today,” she said. “Some of you – perhaps especially some of you parents – might be saying: Well yes, Laura, but the business models for journalism and advertising are collapsing. True. But at the same time, they are rebuilding. Many different models are evolving. We are witnessing creative destruction and we are witnessing the re-structuring, too.”

That being said, she doesn’t have any illusions that pursuing such a career is hard and sometimes thankless. “If you don’t have a fire in the belly to devote yourself to this field, you might want to quickly change your course of study,” she said. “Because as of this week, you’re competing for a job with me – and hundreds of other veteran journalists.”

After taking my first class as a declared journalism major, I had a conversation with a fellow classmate where we confessed maybe we weren’t competitive enough for this field. How can we compete with people like Frank, who have been in the business almost as long as I have been alive? After awhile, I found my answer: to learn from everyone around me. And at the University of Oregon, I have learned from some of the very best. They have given me confidence and authority in my writing. They have also given me powerful tools and skills to be successful in my journey. I can’t wait to go back to that same uncle and tell him how exciting my line of work is; it is always changing and evolving.

“This is the era of journalism and communication that you are entering today,” Frank said. “It is very powerful and very exciting. Yes, it’s also very volatile. And at times it will feel very uncertain… You will help reshape what this field becomes. Very few generations get that kind of opportunity. And it will be worth the struggles you’ll face in the coming years to have the honor of participating in it. I hope you seize it.”

But in all its uncertainty, this is where I feel at home and as Frank said, I am honored to be a part of this noble field.

Blogging: Welcome to the Future

Surely I wasn’t the only aspiring writer who firmly believed the Internet was going to kill journalism? That the Internet’s bloody hands were choking the life out of traditional newspapers? My family would say to me around Christmas time, Thanksgiving or any such holiday, not to go into journalism because it is a dying field. No one reads anymore.

It’s just not true that no one reads anymore. They have just changed the way in which they read. Working for a small town weekly newspaper, there is no shortage of people filing into the office to tell us how much they love our paper. We cover what the Register Guard and Corvallis Gazette Times won’t. Local sports, local businesses, local people. I just did a story on a woman suffering from Mantle Cell Lymphoma. She has been a Junction City resident her whole life and now the community is pulling together to raise money for her stem cell transplant in a few months. Those are the stories the people in the Tri-County area love to read about. So they buy our paper and look forward to it every week.

Our publisher, Steve Rowland, refuses to put our paper on the Internet – he says that will kill the business and we will be giving away the news for free. He could be right, but lots of people out in this farm country don’t have access to the Internet at home, so they would still rely on a traditional newspaper delivered to their front door every Wednesday. In many ways I agree with Steve. Why bother going on the internet? Well, what about those people living in Salem, or Idaho, or Washington, who grew up in Monroe or Harrisburg and would like to read some local news? How convenient for them to read it online.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that the Internet has a purpose when it comes to journalism and I am only recently starting to see it. Where before I used to think reading through a computer screen would distance the writer from the readers, I learned from the readings this week how a blog actually brings them closer. They can ask questions, leave comments and have a conversation – something hardly doable with a print newspaper unless you write a letter to the editor. And even then, you aren’t getting to talk to the writer directly. Blogs can zero in on niche reporting in ways newspapers can’t. The people who care about that subject, area or topic of interest are the ones who will read your blog. As a writer, I know the people interested in what I’m doing are the ones I want reading my work.

I’m slightly embarrassed that I’m a senior in college and I have never kept a blog. I have resisted the change just like many dying newspapers. Now, by keeping a blog I can focus on the news I am interested in, facilitate conversations with my readers and do what’s most important to me: write.