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

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