The Next Generation of Journalists

by CT Moore on June 25, 2009 · 0 comments

in Fifth Estate

Credit: CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

Credit: CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

If news outlets are having trouble adapting to the new digital landscape, Journalism schools aren’t. A new generation of J-school students are being primed to work within social news organizations rather than conventions news outlets. They’re being equipped with a mix of journalism and technical skills. As Time reports:

A cadre of newly minted media whiz kids, who mix high-tech savvy with hard-nosed reporting skills, are taking a closer look at ways in which 21st century code-crunching and old-fashioned reporting can not only coexist but also thrive. And the first batch of them has just emerged from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

They’ve just completed a new master’s program at Medill — with scholarships from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation — aimed at training programmers in basic journalism so they can better understand how technology is impacting the industry and trying to engineer change down the road. Medill isn’t the only higher-education institution blending computer programming and journalism; at other schools such as the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley, traditional J-school programs are incorporating a dose of tech-thumping [...] the brains behind these new programs are trying to capitalize on ways in which sophisticated programming can make the delivery of news more accessible.

The article goes on to illustrate that a variety of campuses are training these new breed of journalists in one of two ways: (1) equipping J-school students tech skills, and (2) giving tech students journalism training so that they’re better equipped to design and build apps that can meet a journalism mandate.

Now, it’s a lot easier for a faculty to launch a new curriculum than it is for a news organization to restructure their business model. But society as a whole is reaching a point where just about every skilled position will require some degree of tech-savvy. So it’s encouraging to know that while news organizations struggle to reinvent themselves, efforts are being made elsewhere to equip the next generation of journalists with cloud-computing skills.

But while there’s little doubt in my mind that news organizations will continue to exists, news media is going through a stage in its evolution that’s going to thin the herd. And chances are that the herd will eventually bounce back in size (whether in terms a few, larger being larger in size (staff) or there being a plethora of smaller outlets and freelancers), but it’s going to take some time.

So I’m hoping that enough of these next-gen-journalists can find their place in the world of news media before they’re forced to switch career tracks, because losing these skills to the evolutionary process would make that process all that much more drawn-out and painful.

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cloudsIt looks like Microsoft’s (MSFT) re-entry into search with the launch Bing.com might have less to do with taking on Google (GOOG) as a search engine, and more to do with entering more uncharted waters: cloudvertisingg. Of course, this would still be putting them in direct competition with GOOG, but in more of a proactive way. In other words, rather than playing catch-up (which is what the launch Bing engine initially looked like), MSFT might be prepping to compete with the GOOG of tomorrow. As AdAge reports:

The software company and Mediabrands, the media division of Interpublic Group of Cos. that counts Microsoft as a major ad client, are collaborating to build a software system that marketers can use to track everything from search advertising and e-mail newsletters to CRM systems to TV buys in one place.

The logic is that too many of the tools used today to analyze and execute those various marketing functions don’t “talk” with one another, which creates inefficiencies and clouds decision-making. Microsoft’s goal is to create a single platform to do so.

In a nutshell, cloudvertising is about sourcing user data from a variety of internal (proprietary databases) and external sources (third-party APIs), and using that data to hyper-target according to their actual interests (not the advertisers), behavior, and even current mood. The result is better conversions and return on ad spend because users are shown ads that are relevant to them.

Presumably, the platform would use cookies and IP addresses to identify users, index their interaction with different CPM, CPC, and CPA ads, and then cross tabulate that data to serve ads that users are more likely to act on. Users would be better off because they wouldn’t be shown intrusive ads, and marketers would be better off because they could target consumers who are actually likely to buy, and not just consumers who they think might buy.

Should MSFT pull this off, they’d not only be competitive with GOOG, but would essenitally “cut’em off at the pass.” After all, search would only be a single facet of a multi-channel ad platform that can “decide” what ads to serve to which users.

Of course, chances are that GOOG is already working on something like this, and has been for a while. And if I was a betting man, my money would be on GOOG because their in-roads into cloud-computing country are significantly more extensive than MSFT’s.

social_media_basketA fully comprehensive cloudvertising platform would also have to leverage third-party, social media APIs to profile users beyond the platform’s database. By reading third-party social media cookies and indexing the activity and content on users’ social media profiles, such a platform could hyper-target users according to their actual interests and behavior much more effectively. And given that GOOG is first and foremost a cloud-computing company, they seem much better poised to deploy this technology than MSFT.

Who knows? MSFT may have been working on this all along and are only now saying something because they’re so close, or they might just be trying to
maintain investor confidence by maintain industry and market perceptions of them as a leader in technology.

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