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| ASNE's annual convention is the largest annual gathering of newsroom leaders from daily newspapers and other news organizations. At ASNE 2012, editors and leaders in the field of journalism education will gather for programs focused on "What It Takes" to lead the digital and mobile transformation of a modern newsroom. |
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April 2012 - Posts
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By Sarah Hogue
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, speaking in the same room a day after President Barack Obama, criticized Obama and his remarks, and emphasized what he would bring to the Oval Office.
After winning primaries in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Wisconsin on Tuesday, Romney celebrated the victories and responded to Obama's Tuesday address at The Associated Press Luncheon.
>> Watch archived video of Gov. Romney's speech
Romney charged that Obama doesn't say what he means and that all candidates must be candid and honest.
"What the public doesn't know won't hurt him," said Romney, referring to his perception of Obama's campaign strategy of hiding his actual views from voters.
Romney criticized Obama's views on Medicare, his economic stimulus package, the size of the national debt and the president's support of now bankrupt "green" companies such as Solyndra. Romney said the debt under Obama is almost equivalent to that accrued by all presidents before him combined.
Romney discussed his business successes and talked about his home life, assuring the audience that these make him a viable candidate for the presidency.
In the question-and-answer period after the address, which was moderated by outgoing ASNE President Ken Paulson, Romney was asked whether he would support a bill proposed by Sen. John McCain, D-Ariz., when McCain was a presidential candidate. The measure would have allowed journalists to maintain confidentiality of their sources. Romney said he had never heard of the bill and would not respond until he heard pros and cons from both sides.
About 725 people attended the luncheon set for 1,100. Each ticket purchased for the two conferences, which have run concurrently in presidential election years, included tickets to both luncheons.
>> RELATED CONTENT: Obama addresses Associated Press Annual Luncheon
Sarah Hogue is a student at the University of Maryland. She is one of several local university journalism students reporting live from ASNE 2012 in Washington, D.C.
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By Varun Saxena
Communication and clarity of mission are the keys to a successful partnership, according to leaders of journalism schools and newspapers who spoke in a panel discussion Wednesday.
Northwestern University's students in the Medill News Service Washington program pitch a story to a media partner that falls within a prespecified beat, said Ellen Shearer, its director and bureau chief.
Beats have included national security and immigration. Partners range from McClatchy Newspapers to MarketWatch.
"Both sides need to understand each other's goals," Shearer said. "If you go in with different outcomes in mind, it can get tricky."
Martin Kaiser, editor and senior vice president of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, agreed, saying, "You just cannot emphasize enough how you need to overcommunicate."
Students at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication help the paper cover the Milwaukee Brewers during spring training by writing a blog called Peanuts and Cracker Jack.
It "gets kinds of things that we just wouldn't get otherwise from our own staff," Kaiser said.
The features include what players do while on the bus or their most embarrassing baseball moments, Kaiser said.
The students cover things that the regular fulltime staff doesn't have time to cover.
The students' youth is another advantage because it enables them to connect with players they cover, Kaiser said.
Sometimes they scoop the professionals.
They were the first to get the reaction of the girlfriend of left fielder Ryan Braun after his recent suspension for steroid use was dropped, Kaiser said.
Moderator Christopher Callahan, dean of the Cronkite school, said it is important that the partnerships be led by a faculty member who feels responsible for the quality of the content produced.
"Journalism schools do more than news," Shearer said.
Arizona State and Northwestern run experimental media laboratories that create apps and news products, some of which have been commercialized, providing another avenue for partnership with journalism schools.
Varun Saxena is a student at the University of Maryland. He is one of several local university journalism students reporting live from ASNE 2012 in Washington, D.C.
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By Kara Rose
As the size of newsrooms dwindles, many news organizations have struggled to carry out their duties with meager staffs and limited resources.
Four top editors who have successfully used their smaller newsrooms to full potential addressed discussed how to do world-class reporting despite disadvantages in a 24-hour news cycle.
David Newhouse, editor of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., said he looks at his newsroom as "a big dog in a small dog's body." The Patriot-News covers five counties, the state capital and Penn State University with only 19 full-fledged reporters and broke the news about the sexual assault case against former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky.
The key, Newhouse says, was enterprise journalism.
"We live, we think, we talk - literally, we breathe - enterprise every day," Newhouse said. Developing enterprise stories and finding original sources, he said, "makes best use of the staff cuts we are all facing."
Also on the panel were A.M. Sheehan, editor of the weekly Advertiser Democrat in Norway, Maine, and Mike Connelly, executive editor of the Herald-Tribune in Sarasota, Fla., who said his success started with building a "climate" in the newsroom, beginning with a "no distractions policy."
Connelly and Newhouse said being a "cheerleader" is one of the most important ways to set the proper newsroom climate. Another, Connelly said, is challenging your team, rewarding its victories and developing successors.
"You have to believe in your newsroom," Connelly said, adding that delegating downward inspires potential successors by "building their confidence and giving them room to grow."
Sheehan, who has a staff of two full-time reporters, said that although her readership is interested in "yesterday's news," her publication was still able to uncover a low-income housing scandal.
She stressed the importance of always knowing why her organization is reporting on a story in the first place, noting that time management, efficient writing and community cooperation made that possible.
The relationship fortified between the community and the publication is something Sheehan and other panelists found vital to their survival.
Manny Garcia, executive editor and general manager of El Nuevo Herald in Miami said going into the community builds readership and tips off reporters about underreported topics there.
He compared his newsroom model to that of a Ferrari - "a hot car built from the ground up." He said he seeks help from his staff to improve the publication's brand.
The panelists each ultimately emphasized high-impact journalism for their respective communities. These stories, Newhouse said, inspire enacted change.
"When you made an impact," he said, "... it has a ripple effect in the community."
Kara Rose is a student at the University of Maryland. She is one of several local university journalism students reporting live from ASNE 2012 in Washington, D.C.
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By Tom McParland
A panel of news editors and researchers discussed new strategies Wednesday for adapting to a future of constant innovation, including partnering with students and better utilizing emerging platforms and video.
In ASNE's "What Should Your Newsroom Be Doing Now?" session, panelists described how they "experiment openly" with new media, which can often cause problems for journalists and editors.
"Every single generation has grown up with a new form of media," said moderator Eric Newton of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. "There aren't unequivocal answers, and nothing is absolutely right."
Video has become a useful tool for news outlets, which have been successful in providing live election video feeds and featuring in-depth "explainer videos" on complicated issues such as fracking and redistricting.
"These are things that, if done well, will be of value for a long time," said Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab.
But, while video is in high demand among advertisers, news organizations still face revenue problems as they experiment with different uses.
"Video scares me," said John Geddes, managing editor for operations at The New York Times. "It's also an opportunity to lose a lot of money."
New platforms, such as tablets, allow journalists to push boundaries and reach broader audiences, panelists said.
"Tablets are a great opportunity to stop thinking about newspapers as one omnibus product," Benton said.
But the tablet still has some growing up to do before reaching its full potential, said Nancy Barnes, editor of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.
"We are still trying to figure out how to make the tablet a transformative platform because it's not right now," she said, adding that a solution may come in adapting the burgeoning platform to niche markets.
In an effort to expand their influence, many outlets are rethinking strategies on the social media sites Facebook and Twitter to direct traffic to back to their own Web pages.
"We want the best engagement to take place at our site," Geddes said.
But with social media still in its infancy, news editors and executives are still struggling to profit.
"We don't know enough yet,'" Geddes said. "We don't know what we want to do, and we don't know how to monetize it."
As the media tries to expand its reach and adapt to the future, it could find an ally in students, a group with which Karen Peterson, editor of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., has partnered to augment election year coverage.
Students, she said, allow organizations to expand coverage and to better tap into concerns of young people.
"In some ways, it comes down to treating these students somewhere between citizen journalists and a few steps down from professional journalists," Benton said.
Despite challenges posed by ever-changing technology in the industry, panelists agreed that he opportunity is worth seizing.
"Every year's going to be challenging, and it should be," Geddes said. "We could curse the times we are in, or we can revel in it."
Tom McParland is a student at the University of Maryland. He is one of several local university journalism students reporting live from ASNE 2012 in Washington, D.C.
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By Sarah Hogue
Being an Olympic Games athlete involves concentration, support from family and friends and a hunger for success, two Olympics athletes and one of their coaches told the Wednesday opening session at the ASNE conference.
Dominique Dawes, a gymnastics gold medalist in the 1996 Games, and Alex Meyer, who is to compete in open-water swimming at the London Olympics this summer, joined Tim Murphy, the Meyer's coach in a panel discussion.
Meyer and Murphy discussed the dangers and difficulties of open-water swimming, especially since it debuted only four years ago in Beijing. Meyer said that every time he gets in the water, he must adapt to differing course layouts, water conditions and swimmers around him.
Unforeseeable conditions, such as the death of teammate Fran Crippen during a competition in United Arab Emirates in 2010, also produce stress during the training of Olympians. A panel investigating the death criticized safety standards at that race.
"The last thing I wanted to do was get in a pool," Meyer said in reaction to the death of his friend.
Dawes said exercise and fitness are a catharsis in times of stress and encouraged others to "press start on a treadmill" rather than "popping a pill" when they feel depressed.
Murphy, the head coach of Harvard University's men's swimming and diving program, said he had to balance his encouragement of Meyer at Harvard. He said he had to push Meyer physically while making sure to support his efforts in the classroom.
Meyer said he finds training to be easier after graduation but thinks that he has less motivation when he doesn't have a full schedule of practice and schoolwork.
Dawes and Meyer agreed that a hunger for winning kept them eager to practice and compete, and gave them an advantage in their events.
Sarah Hogue is a student at the University of Maryland. She is one of several local university journalism students reporting live from ASNE 2012 in Washington, D.C.
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By Robert Baird
Leaders of some of America's oldest and newest publications discussed the future on Tuesday.
The all-female panel moderated by "Washington Week" and "PBS NewsHour" anchor Gwen Ifill talked about digital content and challenges and opportunities of new media.
Arianna Huffington, founder and president of the seven-year-old Huffington Post website, said the media need to produce "more autopsies and less biopsies" of the stories of our time, such as the buildup to the war in Iraq and the economic recession.
"If mainstream media were ADD, the best journalism on the web is OCD," she said, because they "obsess" over stories.
Jill Abramson, appointed in November as the first female executive editor of The New York Times, defended the paper, which has undergone recent staff reductions.
Abramson said that the passion for journalism hasn't changed but that "all the news that's fit to print" doesn't just mean with paper and ink.
"Five years ago, we were husbanding really great stories for the front page, [but] we hardly ever do that now. . . we publish them when they are ready," she said.
With the discussion firmly focused on new technology, the audience gasped and even laughed when Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of The Associated Press, admitted that she does not use Twitter.
Discussing tech-savvy journalists and journalism-savvy tech experts, Carroll noted that many in the industry had been surprised that it took so long for talent to develop with strengths in both areas. She said that everybody had journalists who had developed tech skills and technical folks who had developed journalism skills, but most had expected students or young people with equal strengths to emerge at least a decade ago -- and that has been slower than expected.
According to its website, the 166-year-old news service has more than 3,700 people in more than 300 locations worldwide. Despite the challenges, AP is changing the way it presents news from text-only to a dynamic multiplatform media outlet.
"For us, the presumption that [every story] is a print or a text story" is gone, Carroll said.
The discussion was cordial, yet the competition among their publications for talent is fierce. Chrystia Freeland, editor of Thomson Reuters Digital, said the battle is on among news outlets for talented writers, digital producers and online technical specialists.
Which is why Abramson said she is "rapacious about stealing" that talent, trying to lure it with a reinvented Times website and apps that are "the envy of the profession."
Robert Baird is a student at the University of Maryland. He is one of several local university journalism students reporting live from ASNE 2012 in Washington, D.C.
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By Brooke Auxier and Dave Nyczepir
Watergate was a defining moment in American history and produced a fundamental piece of reporting regarded highly in the journalism industry.
June 17 will mark the 40th anniversary of the break-in and burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, young Washington Post Metro reporters, were able to link knowledge of the incident and a subsequent coverup to the White House and President Richard M. Nixon, largely using anonymous sources.
Their discoveries led to congressional hearings and ultimately Nixon's resignation in August 1974, making him the only U.S. president to do so.
"This was an assault on democracy by the president of the United States," Bernstein told panelists at the "Watergate 4.0: How Would the Story Unfold in the Digital Age?" session Tuesday afternoon. The group agreed that Watergate changed the journalism and newspaper industry.
"Watergate was like the big bang. It changed everything," said Jeff Leen, the Post's assistant managing editor of the investigative unit.
Leen, who came to the Post in 1997, said Watergate established a culture of investigative journalism that involves following money trails, obtaining paper records and connecting with human sources.
Woodward simply recalled it as "in-depth, persistent reporting."
"Find something to follow," he said. "Find something that will give you a hook for the story."
The reporters said they were able to unearth the story because they felt encouraged and supported in their pursuit.
"We were fortunate and lucky enough to work for a newspaper where the bottom line was the truth," Bernstein said.
Woodward and Bernstein operated in an era without the Internet, computers or cable television. But in today's digital era of tweeting and blogging, investigative journalism and news in general take a different shape.
"Operating on the Web frees you," said Josh Marshall, publisher of Talking Points Memo. "Today you can take one fact and, as long as you know it's accurate, you can go right to press with that. We are not bound to that cycle."
Marshall was 3 years old at the time of the Watergate break-in.
"My generation of reporters, you can call us the sons and daughters of Watergate," he said.
Brooke Auxier and Dave Nyczepir are students at the University of Maryland. They are among several local university journalism students reporting live from ASNE 2012 in Washington, D.C.
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By Varun Saxena
Social media and interpersonal skills, and business savvy are critical, speakers said at this discussion Tuesday morning.
"Being on social media is now a bigger part of my job," said Aminda "Mindy" Marques Gonzalez, executive editor of The Miami Herald. She said she regularly uses a TweetDeck to monitor readers' reactions on social media.
Mi-Ai Parrish, publisher of The Kansas City Star, said she successfully launched a new product recently from the ground up in six weeks. She stressed the need to innovate quickly and take an experimental approach that includes accepting failure.
Parrish's approach is in contrast to the old tendency of news organization to "ready, aim, aim, aim, aim and never fire," said Michael Smith, executive director of Northwestern University's Media Management Center.
"Having business literacy is really important to editors, whereas it wasn't a couple of years ago," Parish said, because the old business model has "collapsed beneath our feet."
The change has led to budget cuts and fear among newspaper employees, which makes strong interpersonal skills even more important.
Smith expressed concern that editors are so busy "they don't have the time to model the behavior that they want others to follow."
Gonzalez and Parrish said they like to give their employees small rewards for a job well done in order to boost moral. Examples include free massages and Popsicles on a hot day.
In the digital age, editors are asked to do a greater variety of tasks and must understand various aspects of the newspaper business. Smith listed six competencies of the modern editor - platform strategizing, marketing, community building, data mining, storytelling and entrepreneurship.
The most important message of the panel discussion was to embrace change.
"In some ways, it's the best thing that ever happened to us," Gonzalez said, referring to digital action with leaders.
Varun Saxena is a student at the University of Maryland. He is one of several local university journalism students reporting live from ASNE 2012 in Washington, D.C.
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By Dave Nyczepir
A panel of publishers shared their digital subscription plan success stories at this session Tuesday afternoon.
Moderator Rem Rieder, editor of American Journalism Review, noted the dynamic shift in publications charging for access in recent years.
"For many years, if you were charging for content on the Internet, it was probably in the pornography business," he said.
James M. Moroney III, publisher and CEO of The Dallas Morning News, contended that smaller publications like his have a differentiated and relevant product to sell - local news and information.
But the decrease in print revenue jeopardizes the size of newsrooms, which is critical to in-depth local reporting and warrants the switch to a paid model, he said.
"I hope that some of you will take this to heart," Moroney said. "I think that if we lose the scale of our newsrooms, not only is our democracy going to be in peril, but I also believe that it's the quickest way you're going to lose your profitability and your business."
The New York Times toyed with the idea of digital subscriptions for a while but ramped up its research into the area when the recession hit, said Paul Smurl, vice president for paid products at NYTimes.com.
"We kept getting this fairly consistent percentage of readers who said they were willing to pay something, and it surprised us," he said. "But that gave us the courage to go forward and say, 'You know, we've got an asset here.' "
The Times employed a metered approach, requiring serious readers to purchase a digital subscription after 10 monthly page views.
Walter E. Hussman Jr., CEO of WEHCO Media Inc., and publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, explained how his paper pioneered digital subscriptions in 2001 and found price elasticity as the cost increased.
Such increases could one day enable the Gazette to fund investigative reporting, he said.
The panel predicted that tablets would be a game-changer, with Smurl saying one-in-five people would own a tablet this year.
The three dismissed the notion that most readers would object to pay walls as undemocratic, saying that the sentiment was generational and that older readers are accustomed to paying for content.
"In 1980, no one could read The Dallas Morning News unless they bought it or they had someone give them their copy," Moroney said. "So what's undemocratic about what we're doing today?"
Dave Nyczepir is a student at the University of Maryland. She is one of several local university journalism students reporting live from ASNE 2012.
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By Sarah Hogue
Roger Fidler of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and Mike Jenner of the Missouri School of Journalism showed data indicating that news consumption is beginning to fall heavily into the electronic mobile medium.
In a survey of 1,015 people, Fidler said 57 percent of people who use tablets to view news do so on websites rather than apps. He said he expects use of news apps to gain popularity as they become streamlined and more interesting graphically.
Fidler said that 53 percent prefer reading the newspaper on a mobile device than in print and are beginning to take the electronic medium more seriously. They also still expect the same level of quality that print newspapers provide. Seventy-three percent agreed that professional journalists play a vital role in society, and 63 percent prefer getting news from them.
Although the majority of respondents use electronic media to view news now, 45 percent disagreed with the idea that in the next 10 years they will get all their news from mobile devices.
Jenner discussed growing use of digital news by newspapers. Now, 62 percent of dailies with a circulation of 25,000 or more have a mobile app, and 59 percent of the rest plan to get one, he said.
In terms of revenue, Jenner found that three-fourths of papers make 75 percent of their revenue from print. But he said he expects digital revenue to increase. He said he anticipated that tablets will be the primary revenue generator for digital content.
Sarah Hogue is a student at the University of Maryland. She is one of several local university journalism students reporting live from ASNE 2012 in Washington, D.C.
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By Sarah Hogue
"You can't file if you're dead."
That's how C.J. Chivers of The New York Times described a dilemma that he and Times photographer Tyler Hicks faced while debating whether to move toward rocket fire or file their story and photos from a safer location.
The pair joined photographer Rodrigo Abd of The Associated Press on a panel about internal struggles and dangers they have faced in their tours abroad covering conflict.
The three opened by discussing their coverage of conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, where Hicks was one of four Times employees detained for six days.
Chivers said he placed a high value on contact with editors and his office. Locally, however, he found first aid and triage training extremely crucial when a colleague or civilian being interviewed was injured.
Moderator Susan Bennett, senior vice president of the Newseum, queried Hicks and Abd on how they were able to "get the story" amid the chaos of those regions. Their advice was simple: One must stay focused and calm. Experience also helps, they said, because one grows accustomed to expecting the unexpected.
Chivers, who has worked with Hicks many times and considers him a good friend, said he noticed that when things are quiet, Hicks is "bouncing off the walls." But when things are crazy, he's calm and diligent.
A major inner conflict faced by all three, they said, was whether to continue into a potentially dangerous situation that might provide a better angle. More often than not, they said, they chose to stay behind, not wanting to risk being unable to file if they were injured or killed. A question they ask themselves, Chivers said, is "when don't I need to shoulder risk?"
Chivers' experience as a U.S. marine sometimes put him at a disadvantage, conflicted when his gut feeling told him that where a patrol was going would be dangerous. One time he was right, he said, and a marine was shot.
To remain in the field, Chivers and Hicks agreed that staying in shape was crucial to keeping pace with troops and the action. Chivers said he would leave the profession only if he slowed down a patrol or was injured.
Sarah Hogue is a student at the University of Maryland. She is one of several local university journalism students reporting live from ASNE 2012 in Washington, D.C.
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