This post started out rather ambitious. In fact, it was always intended to be several posts i.e. ” What I learned in:” RW1, NYC24, business and economics reporting, Ken Leher, etc. But I should have known better. I’m already in Vietnam, managing a new media startup by Ringier and it’s been impossible to find the patience and concentration to reflect on my time at Columbia. So I’ve condensed this post into a list of quick reminders, lessons-learned, matters-of-attention, etc. They are not in any order of importance, but rather there to help remind me of what I learned while at the J-School. Feel free to add your own or criticize mine. This list is not exhaustive.

Reporting and Writing 101 – RW1

• What is news? See earlier blog article. I learned more about this in NYC24 than in RW1.
• The first quote in your story should be your magic quote. It should get to the heart of your story. Another useful way to think of this is to imagine that this quote is something you could never write. Again, this was emphasized more in NYC24, than in my RW1.
• LIRQS  or lede, impact, react, quote, scene. Legend has it that Lawrence Van Gelder, a former reporter/editor at the New York Times developed this form of article writing. Up late at night at the Times office, Van Gelder scrutinized the papers’ best articles to see what they all had in common. The result, LIRQS – a loose formula for writing a news article. Columbia Professor Ari Goldman is incorrectly credited for LIRQS. Though it’s not his fault. Blame the Internet.
• Develop a beat list – a diverse source of contacts. Use it. Pre-reporting is more important than reporting, as you’ll more often have to go story-hunting than story-reporting.
• Don’t fall into the trap of exclusivity of new and print media. It’s not a zero-sum game. The two need to work together and serve each other.
• Don’t bury the lede/nut.
• You’re not “off the record” till I agree. Politicians are always on the record until you both agree otherwise. If it’s not “on the record,” it’s non-attributable background info.
• AP Style. Follow it. It’s a sign of professionalism and training. I’m sure I’ve butchered it in this blog post.
• Attribution. Don’t say “many” or “several,” be specific. Be very wary of using anonymous sources.
• Overall lesson, journalists tell stories. Practice and engage in story-telling.
• At times, employ the usage of a “cosmic graph.” This section or paragraph of your story describes how the story has a larger impact than the nut graph.
• For criminal reporting, start with the action in the story that has the most impact and circle back to it in a somewhat complicated chronological fashion. This writing pattern is known as an “e,” due to the shape your story would take if you began your article with the crime and then moved forwards slightly before circling back into time.
• Smile when you pitch story. Be passionate. Be excited. Articulate the news value and be sure to be able to rattle off a very clear and fascinating nut graph. Be able to be brief.

NYC|24 – Digital Media (when I was there, they called it “new media”)

• Take your time setting up your shots/interviews. Don’t let the source or yourself rush you. Make sure you’ve got the best light. The best sound. Don’t settle for hasty b-roll. Take you’re freaking time! Haste makes waste. The trick is moving quickly – as you know what to look out for, you’ve done your pre-reporting and have a script – but it doesn’t mean you should overlook LIGHT, BACKGROUND and SOUND.
• Zoom with your feet. Don’t be intimidated.
• Use the highest ISO before you go tinkering w/ f-stops, etc.
• Get close, medium and wide shots EVERY time you shoot a story.
• Hold your video shot for at least eight seconds. Count it out.
• Use a tripod when you shoot video. Only professionals can go without and they plan that effect.
• Script-preparation. Don’t go out unarmed. Have a script that identifies precisely the audio and video you’ll need for your story. You should be able cross-off items as you go along.
• Confirming sources. If a source is truly willing to be a part of your story, don’t be afraid to be explicitly clear and upfront about what you’re looking for in your story. If you are afraid your source isn’t strong, then they aren’t. Don’t rely on PR handlers/agents etc.
• Pre-reporting. The best stories come from having thoroughly canvassed your beat. You should know the environment, people and general happenings related to your story before you begin shooting it.
• B-roll is not throwaway video that’s helpful when making L cuts. It’s supposed to support your story and your nut.
• Revealing the “Scene” (see LIRQS above) shouldn’t disappear from your multimedia story-telling.
• Another difference between amateur video and professional story-telling is capturing the “action” and the “reaction.” For example, you have crisp B-roll of a boxer punching, and his trainer saying something like, “Keep em’ up. Keep em’ up.”

Learned and/or improved on:

1. Final Cut Pro
2. FTP Management
3. Dreamweaver
4. Photoshop
5. Flash 3.0
6. WordPress
7. Podcasting
8. Blogging
9. Twitter
10. Computer Assisted Reporting

Business and finance reporting

• Ask dumb questions.
• Whenever banks go chasing companies to loan money, be afraid.
• Be sensitive to ethics.
• Interview CEOs out of their office – out of their comfort zone.
• Don’t do topics, focus on stories.
• Ask yourself why you should be a journalist when you could be a short-seller.

Random

• You think you’re there to learn about journalism, and you probably will, but it will be the relationships and friendship you form with your classmates that will prove to be the most influential and educational.
• Watch your back. Without word, my master’s project adviser published an article in the New York Times about our story two days before our project went live. Very upsetting. Very suspect. Sadly, this industry requires you have lots of good ideas privately and very quickly. No one will give you a story and worse, some peers may steal them.
• Take classes outside of the J-School.
• Make sure you make at least one solid professional contact. Whether she likes it or not, I am determined to work for Cyndi Stivers at some point in my career.
• Know how to clearly articulate what is news and opinion.
• Read the WSJ, not just the Times.
• Lament that there is no good coffee shop nearby school.
• Ride your bike more often.
• Use the university gym.
• Enjoy New York.

I’m impressed by how engaged the class is today. And who is speaking up. And what they’re saying. It may just be a lingering stereotype of mine, but I get the impression that this lecture hits close to home for many Columbia students. Most questions are simply curious. But some seem defensive. And I wonder who here meets the $10m criteria to be a member of Richistan. Funny enough, I find it somewhat relevant here to complain/express envy that the professor for the “other” Business and Economics Reporting class bought the book for his entire class. I doubt that a state school professor would be so generous. Could be wrong.

Here are some quick highlights from Frank’s lecture:
Follow the “Three T’s” in covering the rich:

• Invest TIME. Frank took a year to get to know Ed Bazinet, who made millions making ceramic villages inside of light bulbs to talk about his own story.
• TRUST. Avoid having an agenda. “I didn’t judge the people I was covering [the wealthy]. I thought the readers would be able to make up their own mind.” – Robert Frank, speaking on Richistan
• TRADE. Trade information that’s useful to them. Frank gives an example of keeping up on JAR, a type of expensive jewelery brand. Only after he remarked on a JAR jewelery auction at Christies, did a very reluctant source agree to cooperate. He recommends setting up a Google Alert on a relevant topic related to your source and use new information as an excuse to make contact. “Trading information forces you into their world. Be in their world.” – Robert Frank

Good resources to develop stories about the wealthy

• People are the best sources for great stories. Keep up good relationships based on the Three Ts.
• US Survey of Consumer Finances
• Merrill Lynch “Worldwide Wealth Report” (I couldn’t easily find this online.)

Here’s an excerpt of a review about Richistan by the NYTimes.

The data bear Frank out. It was a huge deal when John D. Rockefeller became the country’s first billionaire. Adjusted for inflation, he had $14 billion — less than the net worth of each of Sam Walton’s five children today. There were an estimated 13 American billionaires in 1985. Now there are more than 1,000. In 2005, America minted 227,000 new financial millionaires, men and women with more than $1 million in investible assets. There are as many millionaires in North Carolina as there are in India. And so on.

My classmate Karn Dhingra passed this link along. I loved it. First, I work for a Swiss publishing house and relate closely to expanding into Eastern Europe/Asia. Second, I absolutely love redesigning magazines/newspapers/Web sites. I’ve had the pleasure to redesign several products while working with Stephane Carpentier, Ringier’s art director, at City Weekend. To see how design can transform a product is priceless. But it’s too easy to become seduced by the allure of sexy design. Simply put, Jacek Utko is right, great design is the result of a partnership between editorial and design (a work flow) – not a standalone feature. Editorial must work closely with design and vice versa to produce compelling results. Utko does a great job and has amazing results to prove this case. Take a look.

I am not claiming that Kieffer and I got it 100 percent right, but we’re both pleased with some of the feedback we’ve got since Hoop Knight launched a few days ago. Take a look and tell us what you think.

What is news for a journalist?

1. The obvious: Fire burning down main street. News is a recent or unreported event that has impact on a person or group of people.
2. A trend. The rise of the finger-generation, for example. That is, as touch screen devices proliferate, younger generations are using their fingers to squeeze and pinch content in ways that those ol’ fuddy-duddy Gen-X-ers used to use their thumbs for.
3. (This is my favorite.) Something you didn’t know you didn’t know. Often this sort of news materializes itself in the “weird” section of a Web site or newspaper. For example, like tramp stamps for Barbie.
4. Information that is “contrary to popular convention,” to quote Duy. This is often a combination of items two and three. For example, a trend is emerging that you didn’t know you didn’t know. Example, despite the preponderance of Google’s search engine, there are several companies out there offering a range of unique methods to find what it is your looking for faster and more accurately.

At City Weekend, I ran editorial meetings much like a factory manager would. Articles were largely chosen less on their news value and more on how accessible the story was to the busy editor, its relevance to the readership and whether it was deemed “interesting” enough (by me/us). “What is the story? And why is it interesting?” was the best I ever got. I believe we produced stories that seemed like we could get done. That’s not to say we didn’t hit the bull’s eye every now and then, but little thought on my part was given to news value.

Part of the reason I started this blog was to jot down some of the major lessons learned at Columbia, in the event that if I ever went back to work for my old entertainment publication, I’d be better at it than before. If I had run many of the story ideas discussed in our old editorial meetings through this “what-is-news filter?” below, I think I would have hit the mark more often, and as a result, produced not only a useful guide, but also, a more newsworthy magazine.

So, nearly one year after I started at the J-school, and only three months before I graduate, I attempted hastily cobble this blog article together. I give credit to my RW1 professors, Ari Goldman and Pam Frederick, Duy Linh Tu and Carla Baranauckas for shoving the importance of this, “What is news?” exercise down my throat. I’ve begun to genuinely appreciate the value of understanding what is news. Hopefully, I’ll get better at how to plan, budget, sell, design and build it too.

One of the highlights of my time here at J-school has been meeting Cyndi Stivers, currently the managing editor of Entertainment Weekly. Stivers launched Time Out here in New York as publisher and is now teaching a class on magazine production at the J-school.

We met after the “dog-and-pony” show, where professors of spring classes pitch their upcoming courses to fall students, and quickly hit it off on the topic of content management systems. I never thought of myself as too knowledgeable on the subject, but after having helped design an online system in Django, City Weekend, I suppose I’m keenly aware of their power and menace. Stivers expressed interest in me stopping by her class and presenting my former work.

The above slide show is the result. It’s a short dek that simply touches on what is a CMS, what to look out for when choosing one and how the right CMS or approach to database management can help in magazine and web production. As I am so fond of saying, our CMS published a user-generated Web site, that also happened to make a magazine, email update and mobile phone service.

Many new media students signed up for NYC24.com to work with Professor Duy and Carla Baranauckas on improving our video storytelling techniques. Few of us understood that the class was less video work and more multimedia production at the time. (Disclaimer: I missed a video technique class two weeks ago to report on a NYC|24 story.)

I’m not complaining, but readjusting. Instead of working on digging deeper into Final Cut and preparing better storyboards, the class has gradually gotten used to the idea that it appears to be that the professor’s intent is to throw us into the deep end of Final Cut, Flash, Dreamweaver, FTP management, design, editing and news writing all at once. Sink or swim.

The result, in my opinion, is messy. Students spend their precious time over several elements, rather than concentrating on one. In time, I suspect/hope that this grueling method will evolve into a streamlined, well-thought-out Web site, with a range of stories told using steely advanced new media techniques. But for now, it’s hard to see how close the shore is, when you’re choking on salt water. See some of our latest work.

I gotta say, I like this short clip. And it probably has a lot to do with, if not all, my old family home and the song selection. “The Lonely Shepherd” stuck with all of us who watched and liked Kill Bill. When I heard it coming out of the F-train at Broadway-Lafayette today, it prompted me to finally make this clip in iMovie. (Side note here: After you’ve managed to learn Final Cut basics, iMovie is wretchedly counter-intuitive. Yes, I’m slightly bragging.)

Watching the footage with the song produced, for lack of a better word, an emotion, granted, probably because it’s my old family home. But it also really hammered home the cold hard fact – that Professor Duy pointed out today in NYC24 – that if your audio is off, your video, no matter how good, suffers…badly. The music over the top of Backyard Bonfire, to state the obvious, really makes an impact. But you compare. See it without the song. Mmmm, oyster stew.

To assuage my guilt and to genuinely learn how to read a spreadsheet, I’ve enrolled in Business and Economics Reporting with Dave Kansas of The Street and Wall Street Journal and cross-registered to enroll in International Media Management at the B-School with Professor Eli Noam this spring. For those paying attention to my Twitter feed, I recently discovered that my plan to take International Financial Management proved to be, uh, overwhelming. Flipping through the first 100 pages or so of the $103 textbook reminded me of my intense aversion to formulas that include things like,  ∾ ∞ ∑ ∫ and other puzzling Greek math symbols. Wasn’t I taking a B-School course so that I could learn how to read a basic spreadsheet? And if so, why wasn’t I just learning accounting basics, like everyone told me to? I put down “International Financial Management” by Geert Bakaert and Robert Hodrick and walked swiftly to Professor Noam’s class, where I was startled to learn…

1. People eat in B-School classes. I mean they eat. This guy had warmed up some pasta and meatballs and was going at it. Another guy munched an entire salad WHILE THE PROFESSOR LECTURED. I couldn’t believe it. We would never do that at the J-School. We just sit there and drink our expensive Cokes and dream of Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches.
2. There are far more students in a B-School class than in a J-School one. There were at least 50-60 students in International Media Management today. So, score 1 J-School. It wouldn’t be so bad if they all weren’t eating or…
3. Crammed into some weird UN-Security-Council-inspired seating arrangement. The space between the tables in the U-shaped seating arrangement is so tight, that when you need to get up for, say a napkin after eating your lasagna, you essentially have to walk out on your tippytoes, effectively raising your waist so that your crotch dangerously brushes past the back of some poor scrunched-over student’s head while your butt wipes the table behind. It’s as if were constantly stuck in the window seat when flying, and the person next to you, instead of politely getting up, motions for you to bowlegged-ly shuffle sideways out into the aisle. That’s you squeezing in and out of seats at the B-School. Weird.
4. They have their own wireless Internet. It’s called WoFI. You can’t even get Columbia University free wireless Internet there. Seemed unnecessarily elitist at the time. To request access there, email consultant@columbia.edu. Send email again, for good measure.
5. Can I just say, Professor Eli Noam taught for a solid 3 hours. Sure there was a very short break, but the man got up there and steadily and persuasively made his case that it was the US film industry’s innovation in content production, financing and risk management that gave them the one-up on every other film producing nation. The longest I’ve ever seen a J-School professor speak uninterrupted is 15 minutes. The rest of class time is spent watching this or reviewing that, or simply discussing something someone brought up. That actually may be for the best, but sitting there listening to a professor lecture in a linear straightforward format, wow, I felt like I was back in school again. Refreshing.
6. They have a cafeteria! They have a cafeteria that sells Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches and more. They have a coffee shop! A real working coffee shop. The J-School only has an empty, brand-new, never-been-used-before-still-glistening-under-the-fluorescent-light coffee shop. There are no Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches. I was jealous.
7. OMG. A Coke costs $1.25 at the B-School???!!! We’ve been paying $1.50 at the J-School. We’re the ones who are broke and with diminishing job prospects. We should get the cheaper Coke. Whoever arranged this injustice at the J-School must suffer.

I guess what I’m saying is, today was a good day. I spent the first half of it reminiscing with my J-School friends, who I’m proud to call classmates, and then started my second semester at Columbia. In 4 months I’ll graduate. Have I told you? I’ll be earning a master’s degree in international new media publishing and management.

1. I’m lucky to work with Chris Kieffer. Really lucky. Works hard and knows his stuff better than most. (Chris, you need a Web site.)
2. I can buy, host and manage my own domain name and server. I know that sounds pretty mundane, but I can do it now, no problem. Before, you’d catch me bull shitting.
3. The elusive HTML and CSS horizon are inching closer and closer. By March 20, 2009, when the project goes live, I’ll know CSS well enough to originally design an entire site. I think.
4. Twitter. Please. No problem. Key is to offer a consistent slice of info. rather than simply say what it is you’re doing right now.
5. Basketball. Sorta. But I’m getting there. Been a long time since I went to a high school sports game. Like it. But not nearly as much as Chris.
6. Shooting sports. Wow. Tough. Need two cameras to do it well. One wide and one medium or close. Sheesh. This is the tough spot.
7. Audio gain. Man, in a gym your gain is either too low or way too high. Need to be able to adjust quickly.
8. Final Cut Pro. Still, have a ways to go with this one, but I’m much closer. Basics are accomplished. Would be ideal to learn some more shortcuts. Learning the program is actually easy, compared with making quality videos.
9. People care about Mount Vernon High School basketball. It’s a big deal to everyone in and around the special town. It’s important to me now too. Hope they manage to get the 2010 school budget passed.
10. Story board, story board, story board. This is a big one for me. Don’t get this right, you’re a mess. And did I say Chris Kieffer?

Oh, and I should note that I have watched me a fair share of basketball videos. I recommend the truly amazing documentary, Hoop Dreams and Nike’s “Road to Redemption,” the buildup to the 2008 Olympics for USA’s basketball team. We live to honor these films in our master’s project.

Mark did a great job deconstructing the Journalism doc portion and dropping in bits and pieces of students yapping in front of the camera. He kept it funny and quick. That’s Ali Fenwick’s voice you’re hearing. I’m on camera and editing. Our modest attempt at humor was to repeatedly ask, “Do you still beat your wife?” questions. There’s no easy way to answer that one.

To make this work, you should be sure that you always record ambient sound while reporting and be familiar with something like Audacity or other sound editing software.

Here’s the how to record phone conversations on Skype:

1. First, plan story.
2. Then go take photos.
3. Be sure to record ambient when you get there, as you won’t get this chance again. Record ambient sound from where ever you get your actuals from.
4. Get as many actuals as your storyboard requires.
5. Go home and edit. Realize you’re missing material. Doh.
6. Open Audio Hijacks. Then open Skype. (Only this order works. You’ll be prompted to quit Skype if you reverse order.) Ready? Test. Then call sources and explain. I’m fully honest that I’m laying this new audio over the “older” slideshow. I even ask that they imagine that they are back at the scene. If this is unethical, let me know.
7. Once you’ve got your material. Edit it. Use Audacity’s noise removal feature to help get rid of the phone tone.
8. Lay your actuals over the ambient sound you recorded. Tweak accordingly.
9. Once you’ve got your clips. Export as .WAV and insert into slideshow. Voila.

Maybe Google’s new video chat will warrant a new post about how to record online conversations, but for now, Audio Hijack seems to do the trick. Bummer is, you gotta pay $32 for the software. If you’re reluctant to cough up the cash, then consider this free stuff and other options.

This is the resulting video in its rough cut form:

My basic rules to follow as a reporter:

1. The central premise remains unaltered for me: A journalist’s obligation is to the truth first and foremost. As Professor Duy says, “What is your intent?” If it’s obscures the truth, then prepare for consequences.
2. Yes, it’s cheesy and Google-esque, but a journalist should strive to leave this place a better world than when they first found it.
3. Reporters should begin their investigation using the strictest moral standards available i.e. don’t lie or conceal that you’re a reporter to hopefully glean information from a reluctant source. If you can do it, without lying, you should. Aim VERY high at first, as it’s a long and slippery slope afterwards.
4. A reporter should not be deterred from adopting more aggressive tactics, as long as the reporter’s intent is to report as accurately as possible what they believe is a verifiable truth. I say verifiable using a scientific connotation. A well-reported story, in my meager opinion, is one whose outcome can be reproduced under similar circumstances.
5. I find sympathy for my opinion from the Heisenberg Principle as it relates to journalism. If you reveal yourself to be a journalist to a source, then you have most likely altered what (and how) that source will reveal to you. My brittle yardstick to handle this dilemma is: If you believe that be revealing yourself to be a journalist you will greatly distort what the source will say to you than had you not, then it is permissible to not reveal that you are a journalist – you may engage in subterfuge. Why would the fact that I am a reporter alter your response to my question? Another way to put this is: You’re first goal is to report the truth. If revealing your identity as a journalist prevents you from reporting the truth, you may consider not revealing your motivations behind the reporting.
6. The free market will reward those who abuse investigative journalism in pursuit of an agenda other than that of reporting a verifiable truth. If your reporting sucks or violates rule number two, then we won’t trust you. Readers, advertisers and publishers should reward brands that follow these rules as best as possible.
7. The process of your work shouldn’t result in causing yourself or anyone else physical harm or death. (If however, your death or detriment is less than the good you’ll cause by reporting your work, then you may consider moving ahead. This one is up to you. But please keep in mind those others affected by your dangerous work and that your best stories may be ahead of you, not behind.
8. Don’t knowingly report work that would directly result in harming others i.e. X of guerrillas/troops will be here at Y time. I’m sort of old fashioned, when it comes to this one.
9. This one is just pure frustration and perhaps even laziness, it’s okay to use someone’s original work if you properly credit it.

What are your rules?

He started with an example of crime statistics in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Crime rate in the neighborhood had doubled and many residents and rookie journalists were quick to assign blame to the rash of new bar openings nearby. But a crosscheck of the location of the bars against the reported crimes revealed a weak link. Most of the bars were due south of the reported crimes. A journalist who actually went to the location discovered that the areas where most crimes were occuring were actually inside or near contruction lots. “This is not Wikipedia reporting. We hit the streets,” said Duy. Point taken, but it seems to me that we could have also reviewed the type of crimes reported in the police precinct report as well. Right?

We spent the rest of the class going over the ridiculously easy and simple My Maps feature on Google Maps. This is where I 100% agree with anti-new media advocates, it’s the how you use the tech here than the tech that matters. I hope not to waste any more time on Google Maps. Sadly, we won’t be going over how to make a map mashup this year.

After reviewing our profile pitches, Jennifer Preston, of the New York Times, followed with advice true to that of my own and my esteemed colleagues back in Beijing and Shanghai heart:

Editors need to work with their freelancers upfront. The better you understand the story together, the less work you’ll end up having to do later.

First, let me begin by saying, don’t buy the new 3G iPhone. As I write, I am sure I’ll soon regret smashing it into a million little pieces. “HULK DOESN’T LIKE TO EAT MASH POTATOES!” (Right Kate?)

I bring up the iPhone, as once again, its alarm functionality failed to wake me up today, sending me into a dizzying free for all of lame excuses to my RW1 professors for not attending class. After several spelling corrections, I managed to SMS to Pam, “Hi Pam, I’m sorry. I overslept. I’ll be there in one hour. I live in Brooklyn.” It was the best I could come up with at 9:08am. The story gets better, as after frantically commuting to campus, I emerge from the subway to receive an SMS from Pam reminding me that class was canceled today, as she went over again and again last week. Great. Well, thank god I finished my story on the intersection of the Vietnamese community and local government in NYC by 10am today. Or at least, that’s what I thought until my classmate Emily reminded me that it was due at 6pm, not 9am this morning. And to think I planned to wake up early to complete finish it. Thank god, I overslept til 9am! Right?

I bring all these shortcomings up, as I found myself bashing this assignment and any lingering interest I had in reporting or writing in the process. I went so far as to Twitter, “Is it wrong that I hate writing and reporting? Does that make me a bad journalist?” (I believe the answer to that question is a resounding YES.) But as luck would have it, I had plenty of free time this afternoon to write. So when two of my government story sources got back to me mid-morning, I was able to adequately put together a decent article of mild journalistic taste. And my improved mood dramatically began to revitalize my interest in the allure of reporting.

I’ve always said that the best part of publishing is how each issue is a new project, complete with its own intricacies, budgets, complications and deadlines. You’ve got to know everything about a range of issues better than and before the next guy. I now include reporting in that reflection of career and personal taste. Waking up to a rw1 daybook assignment and attempting to gain a thorough understanding of a subject – I’m hitting up NYC’s Commissioner of Child Services tomorrow on “the increasing role foster parents play in caring for children with emotional and mental health issues” – in less than day challenges the intellect and flexes the tongue.

I’m not alone, a few hours after posting my last Tweet, another multimedia reporter wrote to me saying, “I don’t like writing either. I do love reporting though.”

Five major shortcomings of Pulitzer.org

1. Besides no article archive, there is no feature to discuss the winning articles online in the form of a BBS or comment stream. By adding a searchable archive and enabling comments, Pulitzer.org could quickly create a site that served as a resource for journalists around the world to discuss their profession and other important stories.
2. New media is being heralded as a future cornerstone of journalism, where is it? Pulitzer reportedly just inked a deal with YouTube and Sony to showcase excellence in journalism on YouTube. No mention of this on the site.
3. The site doesn’t utilize a blog to share what previous winners are working on or other important issues in journalism.
4. The design is rather unsophisticated. Made worse by the site trumpeting their latest 2008 design. This is the least of their worries, for now.
5. Pulitzer.org is missing RSS functionality and other straightforward web technology i.e. a newsletter that would help syndicate its news across the world.

It is an unnecessary blight on the field of journalism to have such a revered award so poorly portrayed online. There is no archive of winning or nominated articles to review or read on the site, nor hyperlinks to sponsoring institutions. It seems ridiculous that today, readers from around the world, should not be able to peruse or download material from the Pulitzer’s “library”. Good, dedicated and incredibly talented reporters work as judges and panelists on Pulitzer. They should demand and deserve better from themselves and the industry overall.

Pulitzer.org should represent the best of the industry, not serve as another stodgy reminder that the field of journalism is struggling to take advantage of the one power that ironically could save it, the Internet.

Take a look at these sites for inspiration Pulitzer:

• The Stevie Awards, a site that recognizes businesses and services that achieve excellence in their industries or communities. Readers can sign up for newsletters and interact with panelists.
• TED, a site once sealed off from public viewing, opened up to incredible fanfare and acclaim
• Interactive Narratives, a site that allows readers to enjoy the best of new media journalism and vote on what works or not.

P.S. I just wanted to read a copy of the article my professor in “Critical Issues in Journalism”, Peter Kann, won for his reporting on the Indo-Pakistan War in 1972, which I still can’t find.

Five years ago, as backwater 2nd tier nobodies in Qingdao, China we were experimenting at RedStar with user-generated content in our editorial production process. It was ugly and bulky but hey, at least we were out there doing it. Email newsletters were already rampant six years ago. Personal websites/blogs were well on there way and the Lawrence Journal was tooling about w/ its Django CMS. I’m not even scratching the surface on what else was out there then i.e. Yahoo and Google News/Alerts. Hell, Dean Grueskin’s team was pushing online subscription and ad sales at WSJ.com beginning in 2000.

I realize that the private sector does rather than than reflect. But I am surprised that as of six years ago, “the Internet wasn’t even brought up” in that discussion, according to Dean Lemann. How did this happen? This is not to say that the school hasn’t made enormous strides in implementing new media students. Former Columbia J-School students marvel at the new media schedule of courses now. As a new media student myself, I’m also pleased to see the school boldly proclaim out loud to the entire class that it will be its new media students employed come June 2009. But such an admission of Johnny-come-lately scared the hell out of me.

I suppose I’m just chomping at the bit to see the School maintain its leading reputation for the highest level of journalism. Resting on your laurels is never a good thing. Hungry schools, CUNY, NYU, Missouri, Northwestern and Berkeley are chomping at the bit to puncture Columbia’s elite status in journalism. We should be on guard and cultivating an offensive strategy that sees Columbia hosting Knight Digital Media Center workshops, collaborations with the Computer Science Dept and Business School among other innovative but basic partnerships. Let’s set up some experimental labs that explore entrepreneurial publishing, print-to-web-to-print editorial production and journalism beyond 2050. Don’t just recognize the impact of the Internet, embrace it wildly and pioneer Columbia’s presence further into the future. Just don’t preach to the choir or scare us like that again.

P.S. Oh, here’s Dean Bill Grueskin’s ‘Three Trends Impacting Journalism Today’:

1. The increasing abundance and availability of news sources
2. The ever-expanding role of the user or reader in producing news
3. New sources of news from unconventional or entrepreneurial tracks. I especially liked the part where we were introduced to Paid Content. This concept is what I’m referring to. Plus, check out the job listings!

He answered questions and shared some incredible stories with us lowly Columbia J-School grad students. Eyes watered, notes were scribbled and we all left feeling a greater reverence for our profession. The links to some of the stories are below:

• Tossing Away the Key
• Witness to an Execution
• Danny and Anni

I highly recommend listening to them under the influence of alcohol or with tissue paper or both. Boats will rise