Enough with the navel gazing: What would readers do?

To pay or not to pay? That's the question journalists have been asking themselves in an online maelstrom of theory, ideas and criticism in a broad array of think pieces (to use a term that may have reduced relevance today) have accumulated on the series of tubes lately.

The news business is suffering as it rarely has before, and news organizations missed the boat on the Internet. Now people are used to getting their news for free. But, people wonder, how can we get them to pay for our product?

While I've seen a lot of chatter from people in the business, I haven't seen the question posed to the people who have the ultimate choice: Readers. (Looks like the Times got quite a response about the idea, though)

So, readers/users/consumers, if you get your news on the Internet, can you see a way that you would ever pay for it? Would you fork over a subscription fee, as you might with a printed paper? Would you go for micropayments, a debit account for news? Do you support a non-profit model? How could/would you pay to keep your news organizations of choice sustainable?

It is a dire situation. Without adequate funding (from readers and advertisers), news organizations can't report the news in the ways that best serve the community. A lot of papers may die. Others will operate on a skeleton staff.

But the people who might actually pay for these things deserve a seat at the table. After all, if they disappear, so will we.

Word clouding President Barack Obama's inaugural speech

That might take some getting used to. Vice President Biden, too.

Google, Craiglist and others can make a difference in journalism

The Internets were aflutter with responses to Google CEO Eric Schmidt's remarks about how Google probably couldn't save newspapers.

Let's not focus so much on the "paper" aspect of newspapers, but the news part. News organizations, thanks to cutbacks and a faltering economy, are less able to serve the public by providing in-depth, across-the-board coverage.

Often other organizations step up to plug the hole. The AP and Reuters did it in the latter part of the 19th century; today Spot.us and GlobalPost (Boston Globe story here) are stepping up. I was a beneficiary, like Spot.us, of the Knight Foundation, working with MTV's Street Team '08, providing political coverage from Kansas. It showed me what an amazing thing a foundation like that can be for journalism and innovation.

Mark Hamilton and Dan Froomkin (and many others, I'm sure) ruminated on Schmidt's comments. Froomkin suggested several ways Google could help news(papers), including endowing a chair to bloggers, adopting newspapers and contribute to non-profit news organizations.

All interesting ideas, but I'm going to suggest another angle.

Create fellowships at newspapers, where news organizations hire journalists to beef up local coverage, paid for with Google's fellowship dollars. Google could denote certain topics these fellows would cover, say public education, and require an application and review process from both news organizations and potential fellows. This would allow news organizations to examine areas where coverage is lacking or has fallen victim to cutbacks while allowing them to grow staff, coverage and authority in those areas.

Perhaps this could even turn into the open-source model Froomkin writes about. Google fellows' content could be distributed for free across the country to other organizations. Of course, giving content away for free may have gotten us where we are today. But that's where we stand.

Many have criticized Google for aggregating content, but that's what it does best. We can take advantage of that, and companies like Google, Craiglist, Yahoo and others that taken us into the information age can give back to the people they serve.

Word clouding KU's j-school

I saw a cool post on Megan Taylor's blog, exploring j-schools descriptions of their programs. She was inspired to create a wordcloud about the University of Florida's program after seeing something similar on 10,000 Words, which diagrammed programs at Northwestern, CUNY, Berkley, UNC and the Asian College of Journalism.

10,000's Mark Luckie writes:

One of the biggest complaints about modern journalism schools is aren't equipping the next wave of journalists with the skills they need to compete in today's newsrooms. So what are they teaching students? The online course description for several J-schools were run through Wordle.

I decided to see what the University of Kansas' program looks like, in wordle form. Here it is, below, in all its glory. First, the grad program:

Followed by the undergraduate program description, and undergrad course descriptions:

Why I hate my cell phone

I lost my cell phone. The details of how that happened are unimportant. The bottom line is, I liked my old phone, though can't remember the model, and now Sprint doesn't offer it anymore.

I purchased a Samsung M320 to replace it, and it might be the worst phone I've ever had.

It looks nice and has a camera, so that's good. But the good ends there.

My major problems:

• A weak battery: I just went to check something on the phone, and it's dead. It's only been on for about 10 hours, having charged for about 12 yesterday. This happens all the time. How can you rely on a phone that dies more often than the Middle East peace process? My old phone could stay on for days.
• Text messaging batching: This may be part of the Gmail effect. My text messages are batched by the people with whom I communicate. That means if I want to find a text message, I have to go the list of who I've recently texted with...if it's still there. The phone has a habit of disapparating texts for no apparent reason.
• Lack of notification: One of the best things about having a cell phone is being able to talk to people when they call you. Unfortunately, this phone does not do that. I'll look at the phone at some point during the day, and see that I missed several calls and texts. I'll discover I've missed a call only when I get a notification that I have a voicemail. This is a major problem.

Soon I'll get off my rear to get a new phone. Maybe it'll be a New Year's resolution. In the meantime, I'll keep on hating this phone.

KC Star Web site enters 21st century, doesn't break

I want to extend kudos to the Web staff of the Kansas City Star for the good looking facelift it recently gave to the paper's site, kansascity.com.

It was a long time coming. In fact, this is the first real significant improvement to the site since I started reading the Star online...in 1999. That year, I went to college and missed my hometown dearly. And with this Internet thing, I was able to stay up-to-date with the goings-on in KC.

Problem was, the Star's site didn't change after that. Sure, there was a tweak here and there, but what resulted was a jumble of content, with breaking news in a corner, surrounded by ads, links, headlines, ads, press releases, pop up ads and even ads that scrolled across the screen. Sections were hard to find, hidden on a sidebar that was difficult to navigate. The day's main headlines were way below the fold, about 3/4 of the way down the page.

They're still there, but with the Star's new layout, you can easily maneuver the site, thanks to section tabs at the top of the page. The Star has also done a nice job in growing its blog farm, with Sam Mellinger's Royals blog at the top of my list. Still, the Chiefs are king in Kansas City (despite their record), and the Star has a nice Chiefs blog (wish I could say more, but my interest in the Chiefs slowed after Elvis Grbac left. For real), Joe Posnanski's gospel, a cool metro blog, and even a community for pet owners. There are many more, as well.

I think its Varsity Zone blog is really cool. It gives stats, scores, photos and news for high schools in the area. It even allows readers to keep their own blogs about high school sports.

The Star's site is getting better. There's still work to do. There's just so much darn content on the front page. Personally, and I might be biased, but I enjoy a nice clean front page.

Also, a big thumbs up to the University Daily Kansan, which, despite the gripes I had with the paper as a student, has a sweet Web site, and just upgraded an already good product.

BeatBlogging to connect with communities

I'm listening to Pat Thornton's interview with the Trib's Dan Honigman, the man behind Colonel Tribune (and a cool dude to boot), and he's talking about the importance of linking to connect people. And I realized that I didn't even blog about my interview with Pat. He talked to me and LJWorld.com's Jonathan Kealing a few weeks ago, and talked to us individually about the beat blogging going on at the Journal-World.

The news organization is doing a lot in terms of micro-reporting in order to a) expand coverage of Lawrence and b) further connect with our readers -- and beyond. Personally, I found writing my blog, Schoolhouse Talk, to be a great experience. How else would I report so much on mock elections at Free State High School?

Now I'm working the overnight shift (and anticipating not getting any sleep today...body clock is adjusting), and I'm hoping to install a graveyard shift blog. It would be great fodder for stories like this, that hold probably a limited interest for most of LJWorld's readers. Think a blotter/marketplace of random ideas. Who knows? It might be fun.

But, to be honest, Schoolhouse Talk has had limited success. Perhaps for two reasons. First, we don't update it enough. We're still trying to figure out what kind of news is blog-worthy. In a market like Lawrence, most school news is big enough for a full story, and we don't want to blog about the lunch menu at the high schools.

Second, I wonder if our audience is blog-savvy. Do they see blogs as a snark market, full of opinion? Do they take our blogs seriously? We've certainly had some success with story leads coming out of the blogs, and some of them, like our KU blog, do quite well. The opportunity is there...buffering, I guess.

Our audience knows a heck of a lot more about Lawrence than we do...we take that seriously...and we can use blogs, as an informal reporting base, to learn more from them. Now we just need to start talking back and forth.