This month’s prompt:

Can a good journalist also be a good capitalist? If so, how? Or why not?

The simple answer is yes, someone can be good at doing journalism and making money. The problem is it’s the wrong question.

Umair Haque, a creative thinker and blogger who recently published the e-book “Betterness: Economic for Humans,” has it right. He urges organizations to seek arête — virtue — to “maximize human potential and minimize suffering, instead of merely maximizing near-term profit, shareholder value, or revenue.” (p. 40)

It’s a grand variation of a motto many journalists cite: Comfort the afflicted; afflict the comfortable. As journalists, we want to improve the public good through our research, investigations, and stories. The reason so many of us are so passionate about this crazy craft that consumes our lives is we believe it can change the world and elevate the human condition.

The problem with the question as stated is we’ve seen what the profit motive can do to journalism. It led to the yellow journalism of the late 19th century, when stories were fabricated and sensationalized for the sake of sales. Indeed, the Christian Science Monitor and the Missouri School of Journalism were created and the New York Times evolved under Adolph Ochs as responses to the market-driven journalism of the day.

They were pursuing a greater goal, a greater journalism beyond profits.

We are at a similar crossroads today, as publicly traded media giants contort and flounder trying to meet competitive threats from all sides.

Take Gannett Co. Inc., the nation’s largest newspaper company. Like many of our major media companies, it has focused on maximizing shareholder value, a capitalist virtue. To meet the expectations of the market, it laid off 700 employees in July — its fourth major layoff in three years.

Shortly thereafter, CEO Craig Dubow resigned from the company because of health problems and received a $37.1 million payout per his employment contract. Yet Gannett is still struggling to find its way as a journalistic enterprise.

The market-driven model does have its share of successes in today’s media environment: Pixar, Google, Apple. When Steve Jobs died in October, many drew inspiration from his quotation about success:

My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. [T]he products, not the profits, were the motivation. [Former Apple CEO John] Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything.

As we’ve discovered lately, though, even Jobs and Apple made some concessions to be able to manufacture millions of iPods, iPhones, and iPads to feed the technological masses (and, not coincidentally, its income statement).

Fortunately, journalists at news organizations big and small are figuring out a way beyond the traditional free markets we’ve touted for so many years:

• NPR: National Public Radio has gradually been weaning itself from public dollars to develop self-sustaining support through grants and listener donations. Joan Kroc, the wife of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc, donated more than $200 million from her estate and helped firm the financial footing of the nonprofit news organization.
• ProPublica: This nonprofit website was the first online-only organization to win a Pulitzer Prize for its journalistic excellence. In three years, its donations have grown from 18 percent of total contributions in 2009 to almost half in 2011.
• MinnPost: One of the first high-profile ventures into nonprofit online journalism, MinnPost.com made its way into the black this year.
• WellCommons: This public-health community-journalism site, created by Jane Stevens as part of the for-profit Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World media organization, has connected the community and a small staff to focus on health issues facing Lawrence. Stevens is now creating her own version of that model in California.

The focus in these examples is financial viability, not profitability. The income statement makes the journalism possible, and it’s this reality that inspired the original #jcarn prompt. But the driving force in these examples is the journalism, the greater public good, arête. If we focus too much on the market, on the push for profitability, the inevitable result becomes dollar signs over human beings.

Today’s list of great capitalists would have to include Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. had more than $372 billion in assets as of third quarter 2011. But even a great capitalist such as he considers the idea of taxes in the context of society, not in terms of personal gain. As he told ABC News recently:

The question is what is fair when you have to raise multi-trillions to fund the United States of America.

It is in this context we should view Berkshire Hathaway’s purchase of the Omaha World Herald. Buffett would not have bought into the newspaper if he did not see inherent value. The question is how much profit is enough for value: Forty percent? Ten percent? One?

For Buffett, “value” includes the public good. As he said at the press conference announcing the sale:

I think newspapers . . . have a decent future. It won’t be like the past. But there are still a lot of things newspapers can do better than any other media. They not only can be sustained, but are important.

They not only can be sustained, but are important. It is here that our conversation should begin.

This month’s query:

How do you decide to dedicate time to a new tool/platform/gadget? What is the process you go through mentally? And then later – how do you convince others to go through that process? And, last: How do you ensure that the tools you do adopt are used once the “newness” factor fades?

———

My job requires me to try everything (Quora). And try I do (Yahoo! Pipes).

But the technologies that stick (Google) are ones that integrate (Diigo) with my existing workflow (Twitter). I typically don’t stick with a shiny, new toy (Squidoo) unless it’s easy to use (Tumblr), works on multiple platforms (Dropbox), or expands the function (Instapaper) of my existing network of technology.

Of course, some platforms are so innovative (Storify) and useful (Iterasi) that I have to use them to satisfy particular tasks (Wordle). Others are so ubiquitous (Facebook) that they demand I participate on occasion, even if I detest the medium. Fortunately, some never seem to rise to that level (Gowalla), perhaps because I’ve already found some other technology that’s similar and fits my web of hardware and software more effectively (Foursquare).

My budget is limited, so I often wait an iteration before adopting new hardware (iPad), which can work to my advantage (iPhone) because the technological kinks get worked out.

Once bitten, though, I often become a disciple through demonstration (StumbleUpon) and help others use the technology to their advantage (WordPress).

If they don’t embrace it as I do, I don’t push it. Ultimately, the things that work for me (AcidPlanet) may not work for others, and vice versa (myspace). What’s important is that we choose what best fits us, not everyone else.

—–

The essence of journalism is a discipline of verification.

—The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel

Of the elements enumerated by Kovach and Rosenstiel in their seminal book, I believe verification is the most central to what we do as journalists. What sets us apart from the legions of content creators is the ethic of verify, verify, verify.

To that end, online video is a vital component of that puzzle.

In a previous Carnival of Journalism entry, I recounted my own tale of online video gone awry and noted that it’s dangerous to dedicate too many newsroom resources to video when my research has found that what’s most critical to people who choose the Internet as their primary source for news is frequency of updating.

Despite my doomsday assertion, I didn’t mean to convey that video has no place on a news site. On the contrary: It’s complementary content that provides another layer of verifiable evidence for users. It builds trust and credibility. And it includes users in the journalistic process.

For breaking news, that means raw video from the scene, the bits and pieces that are typically fashioned into a video story. On a churn-and-burn news site, with regularly updated headlines, people want the information quickly. It’s much easier to scan headlines and lists than sit through a 2- to 3-minute video story, especially if they’re at work or standing in line scanning their smartphone.

Video strips users of control. They’re held captive by a linear narrative determined by the journalist. An unedited video, however, allows them a glimpse of the raw dough of journalism. It makes them part of the process; they can evaluate the evidence on their own, much as a database permits them to crunch the numbers themselves.

And the unfettered roll from news sources can be more compelling than that of journalists.

Take this sample from the May 22 tornado that struck Joplin, Mo. Shortly after the disaster, the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader took a video camera along with other equipment and included video coverage to complement its copious print coverage. It’s a good sample of images that gives the viewers a sense of being there.

Still, I wonder about the amount of time to shoot, edit, and create an online-only video, although this video is straightforward and free of the usual time-intensive broadcast cuts and overlays. I also hate having to sit through an ad (even a 20-second one) before I get the details.

I found the first-person account of a survivor far more compelling and worth my while online:

I could get the core facts (number of dead and missing, efforts of rescue workers, etc.) more quickly from the written news story and photos.

And the raw survivor video was the one I linked to on Twitter and watched repeatedly.

And all menu choices — including Disk Utility — are grayed out.

Yes, really.

I’m a bit obsessive about updating my computer, so my computer was up to Mac OS 10.6.8. Unfortunately, my installation disk was Mac OS 10.6.4. Hence, the dreaded Catch-XX.

I did discover a workaround:

1. Instead of restarting, choose Restore from Backup. Don’t worry; you aren’t actually going to do it. You just want to get rid of the error prompt.
2. You’ll get a big Restore Your System window with all kinds of information on it. DO NOT click the Continue button. Instead, go to the Utilities menu; the choices are no longer grayed out.
3. Choose Disk Utility and repair that disk.

Thought I’d share since I found no suitable solution for the Catch-XX in the Mac forums I searched. Happy repairing!

Most users accessed the Web via Internet Explorer. Facebook had just opened its doors to those outside college campuses. MySpace, dubbed the “27.4-billion-pound gorilla” by TechCrunch, had more than 75 million users.

Oh, how the Internet has changed in the past five years.

As we become inundated by the latest, shiniest Internet tools, it’s important to take a look back and breathe deeply. The prognosticators often skew reality and miss their predictive marks by miles. The most important lesson to me? Technologies and innovations change faster than most of us can predict.

I began this exercise while preparing for this fall’s Web Communication class. I was flipping through the third edition of the dated but still excellent Web Design in a Nutshell, and reviewed the chapters on usage. Internet Explorer dominated the browser landscape. “Web 2.0″ was a mystical phrase. Mobile was something to consider, but most usage was expected to come through desktop monitors at 800 x 600 pixels.

It sparked a quick dive back into history.

Browser statistics

I dug into browsers statistics from W3schools.com:

The statistics reinforce an adage from Harvard innovation theorist Clayton Christensen and his co-authors, Scott D. Anthony and Erik A. Roth (emphasis mine):

When the functionality and reliability of products overshoot customer needs, then convenience, customization, and low prices become what are not good enough.

In this case, by 2006, most users were satisfied with how their browsers functioned. Most could display Web pages and graphics adequately, and HTML/CSS standards were helping to mitigate the frustration of the browser wars. What people wanted was convenience through faster rendering engines and customizability through plug-ins and skins.

By 2011, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox had become major players by fulfilling these needs.

The lesson here? Speed, ease of use, and customization are critical for widespread acceptance of any new technology.

Web 2.0 and social media

Social media was coming to the fore in 2006, with MySpace garnering much attention and fanfare. People were still trying to figure out exactly what “Web 2.0″ meant, and media “gurus” were more focused on e-mail tips than Facebook marketing strategies.

Today, Facebook and Twitter garner most of the attention, but location-based technologies such as Foursquare and Groupon have started capturing users as well. Some have been buzzing about Google Plus, Tumblr, and Quora.

For me, the takeaway is don’t become too enamored of any one technology. The landscape changes quickly; you should understand how the systems operate. That way, you can adapt as the technology changes — because it always will.

Remember BASIC?

The advent of mobile

In Web Design in a Nutshell, mobile was just emerging as a data platform. The iPhone hadn’t been introduced, and the BlackBerry (dubbed “Crackberry” by regular users) was the smartphone of choice. But such phones were typically too expensive for most users.

In 2006, most still used their cell phones as phones, and the big concern was the thought that some people might actually replace their landlines with the technology.

Today, 83% of adults have a cell phone, up from 73% in 2006. And of today’s cell phone users, 42% have a smartphone. With the introduction of the Apple iPad and Android tablet computers, mobile has become the primary medium of interest.

Mobile is a natural evolution of the self-referential nature of media usage: We want information when we want it, where we need it. We don’t want to wait.

Browser statistics point to the need for customization and speed. The rise of mobile shows us how important time-shifting and immediacy have become.

The big takeaway

My goal isn’t to inspire nostalgia for a simpler, less saturated era. What strikes me about the evolution of the Internet is the consumers and individual users are the ones dictating how technology will evolve.

Our goal should be figuring what jobs we need done (to lift more of Christensen’s language) for those users, and finding the best tools to accomplish those tasks.

I’ve pondered this question since I began teaching at the college level in 2005, and I’m still searching for the answer.

Earlier this year, the book Academically Adrift used survey data and information from the Collegiate Learning Assessment to examine student success at 24 colleges and universities. The results garnered much attention:

• 45 percent of students did not demonstrate significant learning during the first two years of higher education.
• 36 percent of student did not demonstrate significant learning during four years of college.

The analysis also indicated that students are often not asked to read long texts or write lengthy papers.

The thought-provoking book sparked a much-needed discussion: What can be done to improve academic rigor?

It raises important pedagogical questions. Should professors assign massive amounts of reading and writing to fill the gap? Will this improve student learning?

Let me offer a qualified “maybe.”

I spent 10 years as an editor and manager before becoming an educator, and I’ve discovered many parallels between teaching and managing. As I found with my employees, my students have a variety of strengths and weaknesses, and different students excel in different ways in my classes. My job as a teacher is to capitalize on the strengths, mitigate the weaknesses, and help students realize their potential.

As I began teaching, I read What the Best College Teachers Do, a qualitative study by Ken Bain seeking to get to the heart of what makes good professors effective. One of the many passages that resonated strongly with me:

They [the top professors studied] believe that students must learn the facts while learning to use them to make decisions about what they understand or what they should do. To them, ‘learning’ makes little sense unless it has some sustained influence on the way the learner subsequently thinks, acts, or feels.

In this age of digital natives, we must find innovative ways to engage and captivate students’ minds. As Nicholas Carr documents in The Shallows, technology does shape our brains. We have yet to understand fully how a generation raised on the Internet behaves, interacts, and grows.

I’ve heard and seen educators criticize this new generation, saying they don’t read, they don’t write, and — worst of all — they don’t think. But that blanket criticism misses those creative minds who learn in unusual, nontraditional ways. They absorb new ideas and materials in a multimedia universe. It’s what they’ve grown up with.

Perhaps many students don’t digest massive amounts of reading and engage with traditional texts because their brains are wired differently, as Carr and others note. They don’t think in linear narratives. They seek links and search for connections. They learn through stimulating environments. They hunger for application and immediate results.

Am I advocating minimizing reading and writing? Absolutely not. But I do think we as educators have to push ourselves to find ways to weave the traditional ways of learning with the new, helping students link their familiar, digital world with the analog one we teachers grew up in.

—–

For years, I used my mobile phone as just that: a phone.

I resisted the push toward the cool, shiny smartphones. I didn’t buy into the Blackberry hype. I was fine with the Nokia hockey puck that came free with my less-than-geek phone plan.

And then came Father’s Day 2008.

That’s when my wife generously bought me a first-generation iPhone, and the device morphed from phone to the jack-of-all-media-devices.

Since that time, I have loaded and unloaded dozens of apps — yes, I’ve since upgraded to an iPhone 4 — trying to find the best way to configure the machine for maximum usability and efficiency.

Here are a few of my favorite iPhone tips:

• Integrate Twitter and Instapaper: The Twitter app is the most frequently used on my phone. I check it whenever I have spare moments, waiting in line or sitting at a doctor’s office. I have three primary accounts for various purposes, and all can be accessed by this single app. My main account, @grovesprof, serves as my main news feed, and often, people I follow recommend fabulous links that I just don’t have time to read when I’m scanning headlines. So I quickly open the link and then hit the forward button (the square with an arrow bounding out of it) and click “Read Later.” The added benefit: If it’s a full Web site, Instapaper automatically formats the page for mobile reading. And when you update your Instapaper feed, it’s readable even when you’re offline (such as on an airplane).
• Turn the phone into your social-media device: In addition to Twitter, I have my e-mail accounts as well as Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare, and WordPress all available. I don’t check them as frequently as Twitter, but I can quickly scan those sites as well to ensure I’m not missing important messages. Also, use the camera on your phone; you can share photos almost instantaneously. It’s a great way of capturing life as it happens.
• Take advantage of Calendar alerts: I admit it. I am the quintessential absent-minded professor. I forget stuff all the time. So I sync my iPhone calendar with Microsoft Outlook, load in all of my events, and have the calendar remind one day before an event/meeting happens. For some reason, the full-day alert helps me remember more effectively.
• Train your brain with Brain Trainer/Words With Friends/Bejeweled 2 Blitz: Yes, I do have a few games to while away the time. I find these three allow you to have fun in small one- to five-minute increments and strengthen your brain in the process. I swear these apps have improved my attention and ability to sight-read music.
• Limit your pushes: I don’t have apps push me data, in part because it’s a drain on the battery. Instead, I’ve set my Twitter account to alert me via text message only when someone @mentions me or DMs me. It’s far more efficient.
• Connect to the cloud: Dropbox is a fabulous tool for multiple-access folders in the cloud. It appears on your home computer and laptop, and it’s accessible via Web and iPhone app. The app is great for accessing and editing documents on the fly.
• Don’t forget the iPod: For years, I had a phone and an iPod, and the primary draw of the iPhone to me was its built-in iPod. Each week, I load a variety of podcasts and play them at double-speed. At first, the semi-chipmunk voices are disconcerting, but I’ve learned to listen this way over the past several months to consume more podcasts in less time. They’re great for car rides and treadmill runs. My favs: PBS NewsHour, NPR’s Fresh Air, and This American Life.
• Learn to read on an iPhone: At first, it’s a bit awkward to read for lengthy periods of time on the tiny screen. But I’ve found a number of free books and discovered a great app called Overdrive Media Console at our library that allows me to check out e-books on my phone. (The iPhone 4′s diamond-sharp Retina screen definitely helps.)

Do you have to work for a professional news organization? Do you need to be accredited? Do you need a journalism degree?

Apparently, the Census Bureau has come up with a definition. And I don’t qualify.

Even though I no longer work for a professional news organization, I still consider myself a journalist. I have a journalism degree. I worked for 14 years in the business. I know how to dissect information and report accurately.

For the past two years, I have been working to build a community news site with the help of students and volunteers. It is an unfunded startup that has taken much effort to nurture, especially since I already have a full-time job as an assistant professor. Our independent content is infrequent, but we offer a daily roundup of the best from local media, a way to help local readers sort through the mass of news.

Years ago, as an editor, I led our newspaper’s 2000 Census coverage. So naturally, this year, I wanted to have access to embargoed data to crunch for our site’s news coverage.

But we don’t fit the Census Bureau’s definition.

Embargo access may be granted to reporters, editors, writers, publishers, editorial and news cartoonists and artists, news photographers, producers, librarians, presidents, general managers, videographers, webmasters and other editorial employees who work for qualified news outlets, which include publications, news services, broadcast outlets and news Internet sites that meet the following criteria:

• Their primary purpose is the dissemination of news.
• They are regularly issued and supported by advertising or paid subscription and operate with editorial independence from any political, governmental, commercial or special interest.

So volunteers who work for free apparently don’t qualify. What about Janis Krums, who shot the iPhone picture of the plane in the Hudson River? Though not a credentialed journalist, he shot the image used by dozens of news organizations. Or Simon Johnson, the economist whose Baseline Scenario blog is a top resource for financial journalists?

What about sites that don’t have advertising or subscriptions?  The SCOTUS Blog, which conducted the analysis of Sonya Sotomayor’s appellate case decisions, was referenced by several news organizations in their coverage of Sotomayor’s confirmation. It continues to produce some of the most thorough Supreme Court coverage available.

The Census Bureau also has other criteria for online media to become accredited. They must:

• Belong to a “recognized media organization,” with a specific address and phone number.
• Have 60 percent original news content, commentary or analysis.
• Submit two bylined articles published by the site in the previous month.
• Update a minimum of once a week.

I understand the Census Bureau has to set some standards to prevent every hack from getting access before the bureau is ready for publication. And as a journalist who used to work at a newspaper, I can respect the distinctions the bureau is willing to draw. But as professional news organizations cut the number of journalists, it is becoming incumbent on passionate volunteers to assist with coverage.

Perhaps there’s a simpler solution: Just release the data without any media embargo at all.

—–

Fear comfort, not failure.

Innovation theorists often talk about “failing fast” — taking risks and then quickly evaluating whether the risk is reaping hoped-for rewards.

This is my tale of “failing fast.”

In June 2001, I became online editor of the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader, and I was eager to put my stamp on our Web site. One of my first major projects involved working with an assistant city editor to develop strong coordinated coverage of the Ozarks Open, our area’s premier golf event. Besides luring many rising professional golfers to the area, the event raised thousands of dollars for local charities.

Our big idea: A virtual tour of the course.

We repurposed newspaper graphics for the Web and developed individual pages for every hole. We broke down the key elements and analyzed the primary obstacles. And then, the editor — who was also a videographer — spent days at the course with the golf pro shooting videos that offered from-the-golfer views explaining how to navigate the holes.

Eighteen videos. Each about a minute long. Each about 9.8 megabytes in size.

We launched the mini-site in conjunction with coverage in the print edition and provided links from the home page. We praised ourselves for being ahead of the curve and thinking multimedia. Our site was deeper than any other — even deeper than the event’s own site.

But I failed to consider two critical details: The majority of our users connected to us via dial-up, and those who came through broadband connections typically did so during work hours.

The videos sat dormant. Views languished in double digits. Obituaries and death notices continued to be our top draws.

We had spent days of staff time and resources developing the mini-site. And no one was using it.

I learned a valuable lesson, though. From a news site, most people just want the information quickly, sans multimedia doo-dads. In many conversations with online editors since, I have found staff-produced videos typically are not major draws. It’s the raw video from breaking-news scenes or the goofball YouTube amateur that pulls in the audience.

As a researcher, I’ve investigated this question a bit further. A secondary analysis I conducted of media usage in 2009 showed that multimedia was not statistically significant in whether someone chose the Internet as his or her primary source for news. The primary factor was frequency of updating.

Indeed, my recent research at the Christian Science Monitor found that the news organization improved traffic more effectively with frequent updates than multimedia content. Videos and a weekly webcast were abandoned because they didn’t generate much interest from the audience. And the push toward regular updates, combined with search-engine optimization, helped the Monitor increase page views to more than 25 million per month.

Then comes the inevitable follow-up question from my students: “How do you find good blogs?”

I point them to Technorati, an aggregator of the best in blog content. The site uses an “authority” calculation based on linking and other measures to determine a blog’s authority in a given topic segment. For example, TechCrunch is listed as the top technology blog for good reason. It regularly breaks top technology news and is followed by many movers and shakers.

Technorati is also inclusive. Anyone can join the network and submit his or her own blog with a “blog claim.”

To establish a claim, submit your blog’s URL, and Technorati will ask you to verify the claim with a “token” — for this blog, the token was TQBQQQS2KR9K — which you insert a post for verification.

Once verified, your blog joins the ranks of Technorati.

(Hat tip to blogger Brian Rothenberg for a succinct explanation on using claim tokens)

]]>