Florida: Learning about convergence

Photo by Michael Beam

Sarasota Herald-Tribune photo director Mike Lang shows the Ernie Pyle Scholars the Sarasota News Network’s studio Friday. The Herald-Tribune operates SNN News 6, a local 24-hour news network.

At the center of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s newsroom, the paper’s section editors construct the layout for the weekend’s stories. Minutes before the editors scatter off to complete their respective assignments, the news director for Sarasota News Network, the 24-hour cable news network housed within the Herald-Tribune, rushes to the desk to share his last-minute story ideas with the print journalists.

Television journalists sharing their stories with the print journalists? It’s routine for those at the Herald-Tribune.

Our visit to the Herald-Tribune newsroom was the culmination of our weeklong convergence study. News organizations have embraced the gradual marriage of print, broadcast and online journalism, and the Herald-Tribune is one of the first newspaper companies to integrate broadcast into its news coverage. The honeymoon, however, has been short-lived.

Empty desks are all that remain from the Herald-Tribune’s former feature section that was completely eliminated last month. SNN’s two-full time reporters and five photographers must rely on the paper’s reporters to supplement their 24-hour coverage. And with the Herald-Tribune’s parent company, The New York Times, calling for smaller staffs and bigger profits, executive editor Mike Connolly said staff lay-offs are common within today’s news organizations.

“The newspaper industry is facing staff reductions across the board,” Connolly said. “But what hasn’t changed is the need for people who can ask the tough questions and get people to say things to them that they shouldn’t be saying to anyone else.”

Connolly has yet to give up on traditional print journalism. A daily reader of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and several other national and local publications, Connolly said “the most serious stories can only be found in newspapers.” Newspapers can provide more space for reporting than a 30-second broadcast package. At the Herald-Tribune, print journalists also serve double-duty as television commentators and reporters for SNN.

Our visits with the Florida journalists have significantly changed my perception of the profession. Not only are recent graduates expected to be talented reporters, but they’re also expected to be video producers, photographers and editors. The definition of journalism has greatly expanded since the rise of the Internet. Despite the journalist’s changing role, Connolly said the fundamentals remain the same.

“The newsroom may change,” Connolly said. “But we still get to cover the type of stories, the important ones that make a difference, that make us go into journalism in the first place.”

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On Wednesday, The EP Scholars headed to the Poynter Institute for a more participatory experience. On arrival at Poynter, we were able to sit in on a class taught by Poynter professor Al Tompkins about multimedia reporting, primarily Internet video.

We had the opportunity to listen to real deal professional journalists from all over the nation and from high-profile news organizations – NPR, The Washington Post – and delve into their struggles with converging media. The pros actually asked us a few questions. It seemed like a really unique situation to have veteran journalists make inquiries to the inexperienced.

Throughout the seminar, Tompkins spoke to the pros and the EP scholars about the ethics of video editing. The primary discussion centered on whether or not it’s ethical to deceive the audience by altering video packages and Tompkins provided everyone with numerous examples of ostensibly quality work that had actually been altered to produce a predetermined outcome.

Obviously, mostly everyone present agreed that altering videos to deceive isn’t a move any journalist using video should do, even if the audience is aware of some editing. However, there were a few heated debates among the professional journalists that stemmed from their different backgrounds. Tompkins left the group with these great words of wisdom: “Anything we do to affirm the public’s suspicion that we in the news media aren’t telling the truth is something that is very bad,” he said.

After a tour of the Poynter building, we reconvened in a boardroom with IU grad Wendy Wallace for a bit of a debriefing on the seminar. In the boardroom, the discussion turned to the differences in ethics between journalism and PR. There seemed to be conflicting opinions on whether or not PR people had a code of ethics to follow or not, and while it wasn’t really resolved, the conversation was definitely interesting.

Post-lunch, we met with Poynter Vice President and Senior Scholar Roy Peter Clark. Clark, author of “Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer.” He spoke to us primarily about tips from that aforementioned book. He gave us a shortened version of his tips, some of which we discussed thoroughly. Clark talked to us about a theory of reading he calls “X-Ray reading,” which requires us to look closer at quality writing to determine why it’s really good.

Clark also spoke to us about how to use words and punctuation to improve our writing. He noted that the number one thing journalists really do is make important things interesting, not just report the truth. Plus, he played us some John Mellencamp and Sonny and Cher on an acoustic guitar.

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Photo by Michael Beam

Dennis Joyce, senior editor for continuous news of the Tampa Tribune (left), and Rusty Coats, managing director for product & audience development (center), explained the central news desk at the Tampa Tribune to IU’s Ernie Pyle Scholars on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Ernie Pyle Scholars from the School of Journalism toured the production plant of the St. Petersburg Times, where trucks loaded with newspapers leave the dock once a day. On Thursday, they visited a newsroom where the news is leaving the dock every minute.

Since August 2007, The Tampa Tribune has operated a “continuous news desk,” producing news 24/7 for tbo.com, the online site of the Tribune. That desk is changing the way news is handled in an era of convergence. For Michael Beam, one of the 16 honors students on the week-long spring-break trip, that operation has opened up a vision of what is possible in an era of converged media. “I thought that some of the things that Rusty was showing on the screen and what he talked about, such as the databases and how tbo.com operates, put a face on convergence,” Beam said.

Rusty Coats, managing director for product & audience development for Media General Interactive, hosted the IU group. Coats, an IU alum, gave students a personal history of online journalism, dating from his creation of the Modesto Bee’s first online site to his recent work on Tampa’s tbo.com.

What he’s learned young journalists may find surprising.

• Learning to be an Internet journalist doesn’t have much to do with technology. “It means understanding the audience,” Coats says. Knowing what audiences want and when they want it drives the work of the journalist more than knowing HTML or Flash.
• “Some of the things that are most valuable to me as a journalist are not as valuable to the advertiser or the audience,” Coats said. Journalists might take great pride in a story about the homeless, but the online audience may be more interested in personal health and fitness.
• Audiences can still be attracted to local news. The Continuous News Desk at The Tampa Tribune has been operating since August 2007. As a result, local news page views are up 100-160 percent over the previous year. Local news was no. 5 on in online popularity a year ago. Now it’s no. 2, according to Dennis Joyce, senior editor for continuous news.
• User-generated content is critical to a successful online news site. In its “Snap” section, tbo.com has published more than 1. 7 million photos from its audience – and that’s just the beginning. User-generated content is now 20 percent of tbo.com. Coats says the goal is 40 percent.

On the second floor of The Tampa Tribune, a central news desk is surrounded by the newsrooms of the paper, the television station and the online operation. The central news desk coordinates coverage for all three news operations.

So what does 24/7 news mean for working journalists? For 17 journalists who work for tbo.com, it means coming to work at 5 a.m. Why? Most of the traffic on the site comes between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. Good news for morning people; bad news for reporters who like to drag in with hangovers at 11 a.m., Coats said.

More critically, Joyce argues that all of this convergence makes journalism better. The online operation is generating more breaking stories. Some of these stories turn into print stories. A story on unclaimed lottery winnings is being developed today for tbo.com. It’s also likely to be a page 1 enterprise story in The Tampa Tribune.

And this process is not only increasing the number of people looking at site’s pages, it is generating more newspaper stories. “We are doing better journalism because of online,” Coats said.

Still, not all the problems have been solved. In media convergence, relationships are not created equal. Coats believes the link between print and online works well. So does the link between television and online. But print and television? “That kind of marriage doesn’t work,” Coats said.

Coming tomorrow: A visit to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, a news organization that has tried to make that marriage between print and television work.

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Courtesy photo

The Ernie Pyle scholars visit the St. Petersburg Times.

Photo by Michael Beam

Print Quality Analyst Tom Frick answers a question during the Ernie Pyle Scholars’ tour of the St. Petersburg Times Color Printing Plant Tuesday.

Though we thoroughly enjoyed our time sitting in the sun and seeing the sites of St. Petersburg, the Ernie Pyle Scholars were ready to get down to business, and that is exactly what we did today. We started our day with a guided tour of the Times Printing Plant, which prints the St. Petersburg Times along with the New York Daily News, the New York Post and even the London Express. Tom Frick informed our group about many routine processes of the press.

Articles are printed on aluminum plates and then covered in photo polymer. After the polymer gets washed off there is a blue and silver aluminum bender, which allows the aluminum to attach to the machine that prints the copies onto paper. The sheets are covered in ink and where there is no ink, in water. The water, known as “purified mist,” is the most purified water there is, according to Mr. Frick, a print quality analyst for the Times.

After our printing tutorial, Mr. Frick showed us the paper storage room, where each roll of paper is 7.5 miles long and the paper currently in storage is enough to be rolled from St. Petersburg to Detroit (that’s a lot of paper). We finished the tour and headed to the St. Petersburg Times headquarters to meet some Hoosier alumni. Editor, CEO and Chairman of the St. Petersburg Times Paul Tash, who was once the editor of the Indiana Daily Student, hosted us for an enjoyable lunch.

The paper is quite a thriving publication. Another publication of the St. Petersburg times is the Tampa Bay Times. The Times has a great online Web site with one link in particular worth recognizing. Take out your pens everyone and write this down: politifact.com. This edgy site provides an interesting perspective on politics today and was recognized as one of the “Best Overall Newspaper Web (sites)” by the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Edge.

Our discussion unfolded into a currently popular topic among journalists: convergence in the media. Tash, along with Nancy Waclawek, Eric Deggans, Rob Hooker and Tim Nickens all joined in on our conversation. Tash asked a key question during our luncheon, “Where are newspapers going?”

Everyone had their two cents about convergence in the media. Nevertheless, I think all of us came to the conclusion that newspapers aren’t going anywhere for a while. In order to survive, however, some adaptations and changes in the current newspaper world must be made. Those papers that find the fine balance between convergence and classic newspaper style will prevail. Additionally, looking at the business perspective, newspaper revenue remains in print ads, which of course are an extremely important aspect of every paper. The conversation continued with questions about values and convergence, the ethics of blogging and the ethics of anonymous sources.

It was truly a great experience to be able to converse with extremely successful journalists (most of whom were Hoosiers!) about the future of a world we care so much about. Newspapers are the core of journalism – that is undeniable. It’s where it all began. And it some sense, it is comforting to know there is a place for newspapers in our future.

For more on convergence in the media see Eric Deggans’ Blog: http://blogs.tampabay.com/media/

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Greetings from the sunny shores of St. Petersburg, Fla. My name is Natalie Avon and I’m a sophomore in the Ernie Pyle Scholars program.

We were lucky enough to take our media trip this year in southern Florida over Spring Break, and we have been taking full advantage of the area. On Monday, we started our day with a walking tour of St. Petersburg. Although not the typical destination for spring-breakers, it is still beautiful and warm (especially compared to temperamental Bloomington weather). Donning shorts and skirts instead of the normal coats and scarves, we walked along the sidewalks near the bay, stopping to admire the picturesque sailboats lining the shore.

We concluded our tour of the city at the Salvador Dali museum, which is more affectionately known by the locals as "Daliwood." We took a guided tour and then were left to explore the crazy genius that was Dali. Though I already knew about his painting and drawing skills, I learned that Dali was also an accomplished filmmaker. In awe, I watched a short animated film that Dali produced for Walt Disney; it was obviously crafted by Dali’s hand and mind. It never aired, however, because Disney didn’t think the world was ready for such art. Go figure.

After an expensive stop at the gift shop, we returned to our hotel and changed into beach clothes. It took a little over an hour to get to Pass-A-Grille beach on a city bus. It was quite an adventure navigating to and from a beach that nobody had ever been to on a bus system that nobody had ever ridden. Then again, we’re Ernie Pyle Scholars for a reason.

We spent a few hours relaxing, playing soccer and picking up shells strewn on the sand. Two of our number found sand dollars, but all of us found a relaxing afternoon and a fair amount of sun.

The Scholars split up for dinner. One group went for Thai, another for tapas (appetizers) and the last to an oyster bar – but all had ice cream for dessert. St. Petersburg happens to have a Ben and Jerry’s conveniently close to our hotel. We might all be addicted by the end of the week.

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Photo by Jessica Gall

The class of 2010 Ernie Pyle Scholars in St. Petersburg.

The Class of 2010 Ernie Pyle Scholars all arrived in St. Petersburg at 6p.m. after a smooth flight from Indianapolis International Airport into the Tampa International Airport and quick shuttle ride across Tampa Bay. The Pier Hotel, as the name implies, is only four blocks from the Pier, a cluster of shops and restaurants extending to Tamp Bay. The group is assembling for dinner at the Columbia Restaurant on the Pier before resting up for a full week of journalism activities and sun. The local television news weatherman reported the high for tomorrow as "a chilly 73 degrees." Tomorrow’s plans include an orientation to downtown St. Petersburg, a guided tour of the Salvador Dali museum and rides on the local trolleys to see the sights, such as St. Pete Beach and the Don CeSar Beach Resort. The following days of the trip will include visits to local media organizations such as the Poynter Center, the St. Petersburg Times, the Tampa Tribune, Bay News 9 and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

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