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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.

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.

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.

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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Photo by Marsha Dawes

Professors Radhika Parameswaran (left) and Jim Bright (right) pose with the the group in Yokohama’s China Town.

Tuesday’s main event was a visit to the world headquarters of Nissan in Ginza and a production plant in Oppama.

In the morning, the group met with Simon Sproule, the corporate vice president of global communications and investor relations. Mr. Sproule knew Professor Jim Bright from their work in automotive communications.

He talked about Nissan’s public relations work and cultural differences in communications, especially in Japan and China. Students saw a PowerPoint show about Nissan’s global communications structure within the company.

The group took a local train for about an hour to the Oppama plant. Nissan’s Yoshie Yamasaki, executive assistant, global communications, served as the escort. The company provided lunch for the group.

The group took a company bus to the nearby Oppama Wharf to see where Nissan products are shipped abroad and to Japanese cities. Then they visited the factories, including a walking tour of the automobile production, with robotic welding of panels and an assembly line for interior parts and the final inspection. The new cars included both Nissan and Infiniti models.

Photo by Ashley Thursby

The Nissan assembly line.

After the day at Nissan, some of the students stopped at Yokohama, Japan’s second largest city (Osaka is third). Yokohama is a short train ride from Tokyo and includes a major port and one of the world’s largest Chinatowns. The students ate dinner in Chinatown before returning to the hotel for the evening.

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Photo by Marsha Dawes

Students pose at the Sushizanmai restaurant near the Tsukiji fish market, the largest fish market in the world.

Japanese 101:
Uchoogie = Spaceman (Alien)
Hengin = Weirdo
Nenjin = Carrot

Japanese 102:
Sugeii = Awesome
Ineii = That’s great!

Besides teaching the group some useful Japanese words, Shuri Fukunaga, Managing Director at Burson-Marsteller here in Japan, spoke to us about working in public relations in Japan. Fukunaga said that after university we are all like prepared food. In order to be successful, we need to learn to make our own sushi. She also explained what the hardest part of working in international public relations is. In international PR, you are required to be more sensitive; you have to realize that different cultures have different ways of speaking and listening.

Earlier in the day, the group had the privilege of touring the Tsukiji fish market. The Tsukiji fish market is the largest in the world. It has the capacity to hold five Tokyo Dome baseball fields. Sugeii! Megan Melcic enjoyed watching the workers interact in the market, “It was such a friendly environment. Everyone really enjoyed their job and seemed really happy to see us.”

Soon the market is moving: to a place twice as large. It was such a privilege to see the market before it moved to its new location.
After touring the market, the group dined at Sushianmai for some assorted sushi and sashimi, green tea and miso soup. “Hands down the best sushi I have ever had,” said Allison Wells. What was the favorite fish of the lunch? Sardine!

When we finished lunch, we walked to the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s most prominent newspapers. The tour, led by Tomoko, allowed us a rare peak into the newsroom and printing room. We learned not only about the Asahi Shimbun of today, but also of its past, and of where it plans to be heading in the future. Our entire group took a team photo, and Tomoko had it printed onto a mock front page spread.

Tomorrow we are heading to the Nissan headquarters and the Oppama plant where we will meet with Simon Sproule, a vice president there, and the Nissan Corporate Communications team.

Until tomorrow,
Amy-san and Jill-san

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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 Ashley Thursby

Students visited Asahi Shimbun, one of the world’s largest newspapers.

The students ate dinner Monday in Shinjuku with one of the leading public relations practitioners in Japan.

Shuri Fukunaga, the managing director and Japan market leader for Burson-Marsteller Tokyo, talked with students for two hours about her public relations work in Japan. She previously worked as general manager of Nissan’s global communications.

Shinjuku is one of the most crowded areas of Japan and includes perhaps the busiest train station in the world, with hundreds of thousands of passengers traveling each day. Trains during rush hour are filled to capacity by designated “pushers” who are employed to pack people into each car. The area is filled with skyscrapers and Tokyo’s government offices.

In the afternoon, the group toured Asahi Shimbun, the second largest circulation newspaper in the world. The students observed Asahi’s printing press, which was making the afternoon press run. Nearly four million copies are printed throughout the nation in the afternoon. The paper has a circulation of eight million in the morning – or larger than the combined daily circulation of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

Photo by Ashley Thursby

Shinjuku is a commercial district that is home to one of the busiest train stations in the world.

Asahi prints an English edition in combination with the International Herald-Tribune.

In the morning, the students were given a tour of Tsukiji fish market, the largest market of its kind in the world. They had a sushi luncheon in the shops next to the market.

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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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