Children are the Future Readers of News Print

Kaniel and Laura Medrano reading at the local library
Kaniel studying at the local library

By: Priscilla Kathe
Edited By: Chari Sutherland

The future of news print lies in the tiny hands of children. Local reading programs are helping kids today learn to be readers of the future. News print is in need of a new generation of readers to keep their publications running. Reading programs are a tool to get kids reading and enjoying it.
“If you can get a kid that reads for pleasure you’ve got it made,” said Barbara Dinnan a librarian at the Athens-Clarke County Library.
Dinnan and the Athens-Clarke County Library along with book stores and schools have set up many programs to help children learn to love reading. With programs such as Bedtime Stories, Read to Rover, summer reading programs and Japanese Storytime it is no wonder that they are getting kids excited about reading.
“These programs are geared to reading skills and fun incentives to read,” said Dinnan.
The one that gets the most response is the Read to Rover program. This program has children reading to a certified therapy dog.
Like the library, at Barnes and Noble book stores they have set up many programs to get children reading. The main program at Barnes and Noble is their summer reading program.
“The summer reading program, yes, absolutely [helps children become future readers] a lot of kids and teachers look forward to it,” said Patt Foley a day employee at Barnes and Noble book stores.
The program’s main goal is to reward kids for reading. Kids read eight books of their choosing and write in a journal about what they liked best about the book. The kids then turn the journal into the store and receive a coupon for a free book.
Borders book store also holds a reading time for children once a month. The participation at these events is more like a play date and all depends on the parent’s encouragement, said Peggy Gaffny a employee of Borders book stores. This fun atmosphere helps children think of reading as something fun other than required school work.
“You notice a difference in who has come to the programs and kids who haven’t,” said Loran Hollahan a librarian at the Athens-Clarke County Library.
“As for the reading ability, once they go to school they hit the ground running. They check out books other kids are scared of.”
The programs at the different bookstores and libraries are all optional so some children will be left out; however there are many of the same types of programming at schools as well. At Gum Springs Elementary School in Jackson County they have a very popular program called Accelerated Reader.
“In order to encourage kids to read, students get incentives based on the number of points they earn,” said Kari Dawson, a fifth grade teacher at Gum Springs Elementary. “They earn points by reading books and taking the corresponding book test.”
The elementary school also receives the kid’s addition of the Atlanta Journal Constitution every Wednesday. This exposes the children to reading news print even further and enhances their reading ability.
This reading ability is important for the news print business as well as the children. Newspapers and other medias need consumers who can comprehend the information that is laid before them. These programs obviously help children with their ability to read, but they also help news print readership. Adults who never learned to love to read are far less likely to pick up a newspaper or magazine.
With television, internet and video games all vying for kids attention it is important to make sure that children still read and enjoy it.
The programs at Barnes and Noble, Borders, elementary schools and the Athens-Clarke County Library are pretty constant.
Other than the normal influx from kids growing up and going to school the programs are all a success.
“They go off to preschool, it grows and changes with the kids,” Dinnan said.
With a full calendar of events one can see why the kids keep coming back.
By helping children learn to love reading, people like Dinnan are helping the news print business. When these children go to the business world they will be the consumers of news print.

Reporters re-evaluate their future in Journalism

by Jennifer Johnson

Matt J. Duffy’s Facebook statuses make him feel like he’s courtside in a short skirt, waving pompoms.

“I try to cheer up my students and reporter friends and let them know that they aren’t wasting their time with journalism,” Duffy said.

Duffy teaches communication law and media writing at Georgia State University, using stories from his years in the newsrooms of the Boston Herald and The Marietta Daily Journal to teach students about what it’s like to be a reporter.

“As far as writing, though, that’s it for me,” Duffy said. “I’d rather been in a classroom, stressing to students that they’re learning the skills here that can apply to any form that newspapers will eventually take.”

Reporters are starting to choose classrooms and bookstores over newsrooms as the industry treads further into uncertain waters. Even though enrollment at accredited journalism programs across the country has yet to decline, according to the Columbia Journalism Review, would-be reporters are asking questions about the future of the print media field.

“I tell every student the need for written-word journalists will never go away,” Duffy said. “People are always going to need written news. Not everyone is going to watch video news.”

The success of future journalists depends on their educational foundations, according to Duffy. Writing good news leads, debating ethics, and learning communication law and history are important to the doctoral candidate.

“The answer to whether or not journalists will exist tomorrow is all about keeping a check on the powerful,” Duffy said. “Journalism today will go away. It’s what it becomes next that is the issue.”

It’s an issue that Sara Player has been thinking a lot about recently. She’s a student in Duffy’s media writing class, and often stays after lectures to hear more stories about covering Boston in the late ’90s.

“He’ll talk about popping in and out of the newsroom all day and calling in stories from the field,” said Player, 23. “I keep thinking that, that won’t ever be me—that the newspaper will be dead before I get the chance.”

Though her journalism instructors assure her that newspapers will persist, Player looked into transferring to the English program at GSU even though she’s a semester away from graduation.

“I have such anxiety about it,” Player said. “I feel like I need to have another option, but I really don’t want to do anything but this.”

Player plans on finishing her journalism degree and said she hopes there will be careers for journalists once she gets out of graduate school.

Donny Bailey Seagraves didn't believe that journalists could make their reporting a viable career. That's why Seagraves left the Grady School of Journalism before getting her undergraduate at UGA.

"I love journalism, but I actually left before I graduated," said Seagraves. "We were in a downturn and I didn't think that I could make a living doing it."

Seagraves had several other jobs though continued to write for newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and the Athens Daily News. She still writes for Athens Magazine when she's not doing publicity for her new book.

Her children’s middle grade book, Gone From These Woods, was published in August by Random House’s Delacorte Press. Seagraves has written nine books, but this is the first she’s had published.

Seagraves will talk about moving from nonfiction to fiction work at an authors and illustrator’s panel at the Athens’ Borders Books on Oct. 4.

"It's almost like loosing an old friend," Seagraves said. "I'm sad to see newspapers dying.”

Duffy doesn’t think that will ever happen.

“I’m going to be reading my students’ writing when I’m in my nineties,” Duffy said. “I might be reading it on a book reader-screen thing, but it will be there, and so will their jobs.”


Edited by Lauren Costley

Blogs as Hard News

JT Alexander, 21, checks a blog on Blogspot.com for class


By: Anne Connaughton

Although industry professionals consider blogs a credible source for daily news, readers have not embraced the trend.

The concept of a blog can be difficult to grasp. Anyone can write one. There are blogs on virtually any topic. Blog hosting web site, Blogspot.com, does not even have a comprehensive top 10 list. Instead, they post recent top ten lists on a variety of subjects. Some featured this week are Top 10 TV Blogs, Top 10 Librarian Blogs, and 10 Blogs Every Lawyer Should Read.

Recently, blogs have even been used to cover breaking news stories. With the wealth of technology on hand for the average person, citizen journalism is a common phenomenon. Someone can conceivably take a picture of a local disaster on their camera phone, upload it to their blog with a quick description in much less time than a traditional newspaper would take to be alerted of the news and cover it.

The question is, does the public trust their news from just anyone?

Seth Bailey, 27, a graduate student, from Covington, Ga., worries about the motivations behind news-based blogs. He feels that a blogger only caters to their own interests, while a traditional news sources is conscious of a wider audience.

“You’re only getting one side, not all the news,” he said.

Although he stays clear of blogs, Bailey does go online twice a day to read his news from online formats of his favorite papers. The Internet is easier for his lifestyle than a traditional newspaper, he said, because he spends a lot of time on the computer and often the exact story he is searching for pops up quickly.

“I’m more often in front of a computer screen than a newsstand,” Bailey said.

Hannah Wilson, 20, an art education major from Commerce, Ga., agrees that blogs are too opinionated for hard news. She commonly reads four newspapers a week, and only ventures online for celebrity gossip and the type of news she would not be likely to find in a daily, local publication.

“I like the idea of a team putting out my paper,” Wilson said, “Not just one person. That gives the paper different opinions, there’s protagonist and antagonists and positive and negatives in stories that are developed in newsrooms.”

Ashlee Berryhill, 20, a business administration/management major from Cochran, Ga., has the opposite opinion. Berryhill reads The Red and Black daily, and her hometown newspaper, The Cochran Journal, on weekends when she goes home.

Berryhill rarely turns to the online version of stories for her news, preferring a tangible newspaper because she can carry it with her all day long and read it when she likes.
However, she would consider a blog as a primary source of news. Berryhill likes the ability to comment on news stories, and likes more information than only what was presented that these posts offer.

Newspapers are rushing to compete with the upswing in blogging, and are hiring professional bloggers to their sites. Maybe this trend will make for a people’s wider acceptance of a blog as a credible news source.

Many recent graduates are entering the blogging industry, and Sara Idacavage, 22, an editorial intern for Dailycandy.com, is one such individual. Dailycandy.com is a site devoted to the entertainment, culture, and lifestyle of various major cities. According to Idacavage, 99 percent of her job is fact checking, looking up anything in a blog that isn’t an opinion.

Before her current position, Idacavage was a student at the University of Georgia and co-founder of a blog, Thepopcouture.com, a blog that ties pop culture references to what’s happening in the fashion industry. She started this blog because she saw a need for a different kind of fashion blog.

“So many blogs are just runway shows or selling some $700 dress,” she said, “I’m just not a blog person—I wanted something I would read.”

According to Idacavage, Dailycandy.com is a professional blog because of the effort spent fact checking and making sure the stories stay fair and accurate. Thepopcouture.com is more fun and personal, though she does feel that people take her more seriously with a blog on her business card.

Because of her experience at her current position, Idacavage believes a blog can definitely be a source for credible hard news.

“I mean, even CNN has a twitter,” she said, “So I wouldn’t rule it out.”

Edited by: Robert Burns

Will Cell Phones Become Newspapers?

The Future of Cell Phones as Newspapers
By: ROBERT A. BURNS, II
Edited by: ANNE CONNAUGHTON

A decade ago, the Internet was where the journalism industry was headed. But ever since the birth of the "smartphone," the industry has veered into a new direction: your pocket.

Mobile platform journalism, or news broadcast to cell phones, is quickly gaining popularity with both newspapers and consumers. Many major online publications have adopted the cell phone as a new media channel of reaching readers.

Eli Wendkos, 38, social media product manager at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, manages the newspaper’s use of new media channels. Since 2006, AJC.com has expanded their use of mobile platforms such as cell phones, as a response of the shift towards new media in the journalism industry.

“I think you’re going to see mobile platform journalism continue to be a distribution mechanism for content, especially as technology continues to push forward,” Wendkos said. “Readers want to be able to choose the content they view, and with cell phones, news papers can do that.”

Mobile platforms are certainly being streamlined from print and online forms for concision and content at newspapers nationwide. The AJC.com, for example, offers a “text message alert system” on a variety of story types, including local and national breaking news, entertainment, lottery, sports and weather.

Readers can subscribe online to the text alert system, and are updated instantly when there is new info on the story types they have selected. Several major cell service providers support the system, making it even easier for readers to subscribe to stories. They need only indicate who their provider is and which story types they would like to receive text alerts for.

AJC.com is not the only online newspaper to offer a text message-based news service. CNN.com also offers similar features to the AJC, in addition to multimedia options such as photos, and electronic polling.

According to Wendkos, although AJC.com has yet to see drastic increases in revenue from the switch, the program has been very successful at building a following of readers that prefers reading the news on their phones. He said that even though advertisers are lagging behind the cell phone industry, many readers are still interested in mobile platform journalism.

Wendkos said that mobile platform journalism is fast becoming a big industry, and that AJC.com will continue to expand its program in coming years to continue to serve readers. “In the future, you’re probably going to see a move to smart phones, as well as an increase in focus on video submissions from readers," he said.

It is a common generalization that younger aged demographics embrace technology, but many college students still haven't yet jumped on the cell phone bandwagon, so to speak. In spite of all of the benefits that mobile platform journalism offers consumers, many readers are simply uninterested in reading the news from their cell phones.

Michelle Pope, a junior from Roswell, Ga., admitted that her lack of interest is the main reason she doesn't read the news from her phone. "I don't really care about reading the news in general," she said. "I don't read the news on my phone, but I don't even watch it on TV."

Brittany Vandemark, also from Roswell, offered a similar sentiment. "No, I don't read the news on my phone," she said. "There's so much everywhere about health care and the war, you really don't have to go far to get the news. And I don't even watch it on TV so my cell phone is really unneccessary."

Aleksi Reid, from Columbus, Georgia, reads the news, but simply sees no use for a phone as a newspaper. "I use my phone mostly for texting, and occasionally for calling people," she said. "'Text message alerts' on the news would just be annoying to me."

Some consumers see no need for mobile platform journalism. Still, others see a use for it, but do not have access to it.

Antonio Holliday, a senior from Roswell, Georgia, admitted that he does not read the news on his phone because he can't afford the cost of the internet, but he once did. "I don't have internet on my cell phone," he said. "I used to. If I got it back again, I would continue to read the news from my phone because it's quick and easily accessible."


Tags: cell phones, journalism, future, text message