The River

The personal professional blog of Pamela Parker -- musings on marketing, advertising, media and technology.

Current Affairs

Journalism and Business — not always strange bedfellows

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There’s an interesting piece today in Inside Higher Education that discusses Columbia Journalism School and its mandate to educate journalists to handle the tumultuous shifts happening in media today (both consumption patterns and business models). Among the changes proposed by Bill Grueskin, the former deputy managing editor for news at The Wall Street Journal and the school’s new dean of academic affairs, is a course on the business of journalism:


Though he acknowledged that the course would bridge the longstanding gap between the business and editorial sides of the journalism world, he did not think this would present an ethical problem for students. If anything, he said, it might help them in a market where some journalists have had to become entrepreneurs to find an audience for their work online.

“Most journalism schools have a historical aversion to teaching the business of journalism,” Grueskin said. “It, however, is incumbent upon us to show our students the [changing business] model. We’re not blurring the lines between business and editorial. The truth is, business considerations have always enabled or disabled journalism — more the latter than the former as of late. We’re not trying to graduate people to work in ad departments but those who can talk to those in the ad department.”

At FM, especialy in the author services department, this is a topic we deal with every day, and it’s fascinating to see my alma mater deem it worthy of study. I wholeheartedly agree.

P.S. I would love to be an adjunct professor for such a course.

Kids and the Economy

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Two FM authors — Asha from Parent Hacks and Mindy from The Mommy Blog — weigh in on how to talk to kids about the economy — on CNN. I think they both did a great job, and I’m impressed with the quality of the Skype video. It’s great to see such talented bloggers cross over to bring their brands to video so successfully, as they did here and as they’re doing at The Momversation.

Going to SXSW

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After all these years, I’m finally getting the chance to re-visit one of my favorite towns — where I did my undergraduate degree — and I’m thrilled to be attending SXSW Interactive for the first time. Yippee! So, if you’ll be there, too, let me know.

BlogHer, Day 1

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So, if I don’t get inspired to blog here at BlogHer, I probably never will. Hmm…

What’s amazing to me — and, I suppose this reflects what BlogHer was supposed to be about, in the first place — is how broad and diverse the blogging world is. And this is largely just the female side. So heartening, really. And it’s so pleasant, and unusual, to be in such a huge group in which the standard introductory line is “what do you blog about?” This when the typical blog-related conversation with a “normal” person begins with “you know what a blog is, right?”

It’s obvious it’s my first BlogHer, isn’t it?

Perhaps I’m missing something?

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So, President Bush is pushing hard for ethanol to help us “end our dependence on foreign oil.” But we’re only able to raise ethanol-producing crops — specifically corn — in such abundance because we’re dousing them with petroleum-based fertilizers. (Yes, I read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”) So how in the world does this idea work? Yeah, I know there’s switchgrass (I also listen to the State of the Union speeches, occasionally), but could we produce anything sustainably that would genuinely make a difference? Maybe I’m just showing my ignorance, but I’ve never heard this element of the argument before. Anyone know how this reconciles? Or does it?