The River

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

Journalism

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.

JG: “pick up the weight”

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My colleague James Gross got me thinking with today’s post, “Pick up the Weight. See what you can do with it.”

You see, before I took my current gig, I was something of a “thought leader.” I had a bi-weekly column (and wrote news articles) on ClickZ where I pontificated on the issues of the day — at least where it concerned interactive marketing. I thought big strategic thoughts. I talked to the major players. I updated this blog a hell of a lot more than I do now.

But I consciously chose to give up the free conference passes and the complimentary dinners at fancy restaurants hosted by PR people. Why? Because I wanted to practice what I was preaching. I wanted to do something — pick up the weight, so to speak. If nothing else, I thought it would make me an infinitely better reporter and pontificator on the space.

I’ve learned tons and been a part of creating some really amazing things. I’m too busy to talk (read: Twitter, blog, etc.) about it, mostly, and I’ve occasionally been frustrated about that. But James’ post today cheered me up a little and validated the unsung heroes of our industry (I fancy myself one of these, I guess) — those who may not speak the loudest, but those focused on doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

Breaking Video News With a Mobile Phone

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Wow. Just saw a story that says Fox News Channel actually aired video footage captured with a Treo, during the NYC plane crash aftermath this week.

From the piece:

“We’ve been waiting for the opportunity to get live pictures on the air from inside a cellular network, and we wanted to take it to the next level, make it easy for people and make it portable,” said Ben Ramos, director of field operations for Fox News.

On Joining FM

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Fm_logo
Yes, it‘s true (as if you doubted it). I’m joining FM Publishing as author services manager, to work with John Battelle and his team on developing this next-generation publishing company.

Why? One of my earliest experiences in the Internet ad world was as intern/writer/ad sales person at @NY. I got the ad sales part of the job (and all the rest) courtesy of Tom Watson, who I’d met while finishing up my masters in journalism at Columbia. One of the more important things I learned (besides that I was not cut out for selling) was how difficult it was for agencies to buy ads across niche Web sites. No matter how engaged and influential their audiences, it was just plain logistically difficult to buy across all those sites. And that was 1998, before the explosion in blogs, and their accompanying engaged, influential (but niche) audiences. That’s one of the issues FM is looking to address.

Why else? I’ve spent the years since that experience thinking and writing about interactive advertising, watching the boom, the flameout and the subsequent rise. Joining FM is an opportunity for me to apply everything I’ve learned over the years about advertising and about managing writers. It’s also a great chance to work with brilliant, dedicated people who have a strong vision of the future of publishing. Needless to say I’m especially looking forward to getting to know the authors, many of whom I feel I know already through reading their compelling writing. I’m really eager to start helping them realize their dreams for their sites.

One of the things I had to really look at when considering this opportunity was whether I’d miss writing. I’ve helped with writing news and authored a bi-weekly column since 2001. I looked back recently over the archives of what I’ve written for ClickZ, and the sheer volume is amazing. Thankfully, FM, as you might expect, is supportive of my blogging, so I’ll have The River as an outlet for my musings. Not sure exactly how often I’ll be posting or what shape it’ll take, but give me time to get my feet wet and together we’ll see what emerges. (Feedback is always welcome, of course.)

I’m still at ClickZ for the next week. Then I’ll take a whole day (!) off to do yoga and nap (or something equally relaxing), and I start at FM on August 1. To all you FM authors out there, I look forward to working with you!

My New Office

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My New Office Building
Originally uploaded by Pamela PC.

It’s times like this I love living in California. I’ve just moved to a new office building this week, finally separating myself from the Jupitermedia SF offices after Incisive Media‘s acquisition of ClickZ and SEW in August. The new building’s called the Strawberry Creek Design Center, and it houses a variety of design-oriented businesses, along with a yoga studio and a sports-medicine chiropractic office. (Very Berkeley). Yes, I’m now in Berkeley. My shared office area has a lot of natural light, easy exposure to open space (the green in the picture is Strawberry Creek Park), and a nice conference room. Come visit.

UPDATE: Just checked JUPM’s page on the new Google Finance and this blog entry is included in “blog posts,” I guess because of my mention of the company. Wild. Henry Blodget says the “blog posts” feature is a “traffic firehose” so it’s interesting to see what turns up there. (Will we soon see Google Finance-specific spam?)

Sold

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No, I’m not completely out of the loop. For example, I got the news that Jupitermedia Corp. has sold ClickZ and Search Engine Strategies to a British outfit called Incisive Media. SES’s Danny Sullivan says: “while the owners are changing, the quality content we aim to deliver to you is not.” The ink still isn’t yet dry on the acquisition agreement (involving $43 million cash, btw), so obviously there are many details left to be worked out. Can’t say much more than that at the moment.

Coverage:

  • Search Engine Lowdown
  • MarketingVox
  • Reuters
  • Paidcontent.org
  • Alan Meckler’s blog