Brendan R. Watson

Today a colleague asked if I had seen Obama on 60 Minutes on Sunday, and I retorted that if I watched Obama every time he was on T.V. I would do nothing else.

I was only half-joking, but hadn’t really stopped to think about the concept of Obama’s media overexposure until tonight. I hadn’t planned on watching his prime-time press conference. I had studying to do. But I turned on NPR while I was making dinner and I was hooked. I had been very skeptical of Obama’s budget and its effect on the health of the economy down the road. I feel that we’re spending too much money to fix the economy instead of fixing our abuses of the economy (over consumption). But Obama did explain the rationale of his budget and some of its nuanced mechanics in ways I hadn’t heard in other sound-bites, mostly in my sporadic morning consumption of CNN and NPR while I get ready for work in the morning.

Despite having an essay to work on, listening to his speech was very interesting and worthwhile. Maybe it didn’t convince me completely, but I feel this president is actually intellectually honest and gives us legitimate differences of opinion to base our debate on, instead of forcing down our throats a self-serving ideology. But does the substance of the debate get lost in his media exposure, especially on ESPN and “The Tonight Show?” All we all too prepared to tune him out, even when he offers serious substance?

I first dismissed the notion when I heard it discussed on CNN last week, but having nearly missed a great opportunity to hear the important issues of our country discussed in real terms, I realized my own exhaustion with Obama-mania has gotten the best of me. Politico offers a thoughtful discussion/critique of the Obama’s media strategy.

• Die, newspaper, die? / The geek gurus all weigh in on the end of dead-tree media. Are they wrong?
  The grand upshot? They don't really have any idea. But they have some curious, slippery, hopeful, but ultimately disappointing theories. Theories that, to my mind, consistently miss the mark, in at least one or two vital ways.
  (tags: journalism newspapers sfgate)

The New York Times had this funny piece about naked hikers in the Swiss Alps on its homepage yesterday night. (And no, I am not linking to it again). What’s more disturbing? Naked hiking in the snow or the fact that naked hiking in the snow is news worthy enough not only to warrant coverage by the New York Times, but prime real estate on its website?

I would surmise the New York Times’ editors probably don’t think it that news worthy. But they know there’s people like me sitting in front of our computers watching mindless television and equally mindlessly perusing the web who will post these stories to our Facebook pages and Twitter feeds to humor our friends — and sure enough three friends quickly commented on the article on my Facebook profile. And in the era of hits as the end-all-be-all of defining value on the web, this is precisely how stories like this become “news,” and proliferate in various iterations of the news-of-the-weird (cute-puppy-dog, bikini-shot and stupid criminal stories).

I’ve gotten more invitations to join “Save Newspapers” Facebook groups. Forget it! I’m not joining. Save newspaper journalism? Sure. Where do I sign up. But these groups make no distinction between medium and message and newspapers in of themselves as a medium are not worth saving. Lets stop trying to save the dinosaurs and think about how we can influence this new medium, while preserving the message.

And could we not start by refusing to pass along worthless stories? Granted, they’re sometimes funny, but they have no value. The person counting the clicks as we pass along the stories on Twitter and Facebook — and not the intangibles (or at least the much more difficult to measure tangibles) of the impact of real, public-affairs news — doesn’t see that. Instead of joining meaningless “Save the Dinosaur!” groups on Facebook, it would be much more productive to concentrate on an area of social media where journalists could demonstrate an impact by only passing along news organizations’ serious, public affairs journalism, and encouraging their networks to join the group and do the same. This will actually help expand the market online for the serious newspaper journalism that we want to save.

The most valuable journalistic experience I had is leading Student Life, the student newspaper at Washington University. Having complete responsibility for the entire production process taught me more skills and strategies that have come in handy in my career as a multimedia journalist than studying online journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism, or even working in a multimedia newsroom. I also learned a lot about communication, leadership and management.

That said, the structure of many student newspapers hurts the quality of journalism education on those campuses. The fact that most student newspapers are independent from the university means they are not integrated into the curriculum. Its very difficult to have a innovative curriculum. It simply takes too long to propose new courses and have them approved. Thus, innovation must occur through extracurricular activities, including student newspapers, which can be a significant lab for experimenting with new forms of reporting and news delivery.

But there is very little or no coordination between the journalism curriculum and student newspapers — usually the most significant media outlet on a campus — because of their independence from the university. Journalism schools (and their students) are missing out on significant teaching opportunities. These teaching opportunities need to include the type of skills and management experience I mentioned above, preserving the bulk of student leadership. But innovation should also not be completely dependent on the uneven leadership students to provide during their brief tenures. Student media boards provide some leadership, but when busy professionals parachute in for only one, maybe two, meetings a year they provide often less consistent leadership than student editors.

Many student newspapers are starting to grapple with similar problems as those that inflict the profession as a whole. More involvement of journalism programs in college newspapers would help provide longer-term strategies to remain viable as the advertising landscape and reader habits change, as well as to create an innovative lab for experimentation that is absent in most curriculums (and in the students, who surprisingly cling to very conservative approaches). Students need to be prodded to experiment. Journalism programs need an outlet to teach experimentation. Separated, both the quality of the journalism curriculum and the student newspaper suffer.