Well I guess I did pretty well at the professional advisory committee meeting last week at Northwest Missouri State University. Because someone who was there has invited me to join the advisory committee for the national organization that helps student-run media improve their operations.
I'll be heading over to the Roosevelt Hotel today for lunch and a meeting or two with the members of the College Media Advisers group, which hosts its annual meeting this weekend in New York City.
The hotel is about an hour from my home by subway...so I hope that gives me enough time to come up with something intelligent to say.
If anyone else says anything intelligent, I'll make sure to talk about it on this blog.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Magazine launch by Sosland
I did pick up one actual piece of B2B journalism news during my week in Kansas City. Sosland Publishing has launched a new, biweekly publication called "Food Business News."
Sosland, the 83-year-old publisher with offices in the Kansas City Board of Trade, is best known as the owner of Milling & Baking News. Sosland's latest venture reaches a bit beyond its traditional coverage of grain-based food companies, as the company tries to reach executives "throughout the food processing industry."
In some ways, Sosland is the archetype of a trade publisher. It's a family-run business (the last name of the top three executives on Food Business News' masthead is Sosland.) The company has its roots in the industry it covers, not in journalism. And Sosland is tied to the community where it's based -- funding charities and maintaining a positive corporate reputation in a small community while remaining invisible at the national level.
But despite the sort of old-fashioned feel of Sosland, it's a remarkably modern and professional company. The editors produce clean copy that's mostly free of the industry jargon and boosterism that plague many B2B publishers.
Also of note is that unlike many of its trade journalism brethren, Sosland seems at ease in the online world. The company's Web sites are crisp; Navigation is simple and intuitive. Even the print version of Food Business News seems to be a creature of new media: the front page features brushed-metal coloring and has a table of contents that resembles left-hand navigation.
So imagine my disappointment to find that Sosland named its new magazine Food Business News without buying the domain name foodbusinessnews.com. That URL will take you to a site from the World News portal. To see Sosland's magazine, you'll have to visit foodbusinessnews.net.
Sosland, the 83-year-old publisher with offices in the Kansas City Board of Trade, is best known as the owner of Milling & Baking News. Sosland's latest venture reaches a bit beyond its traditional coverage of grain-based food companies, as the company tries to reach executives "throughout the food processing industry."
In some ways, Sosland is the archetype of a trade publisher. It's a family-run business (the last name of the top three executives on Food Business News' masthead is Sosland.) The company has its roots in the industry it covers, not in journalism. And Sosland is tied to the community where it's based -- funding charities and maintaining a positive corporate reputation in a small community while remaining invisible at the national level.
But despite the sort of old-fashioned feel of Sosland, it's a remarkably modern and professional company. The editors produce clean copy that's mostly free of the industry jargon and boosterism that plague many B2B publishers.
Also of note is that unlike many of its trade journalism brethren, Sosland seems at ease in the online world. The company's Web sites are crisp; Navigation is simple and intuitive. Even the print version of Food Business News seems to be a creature of new media: the front page features brushed-metal coloring and has a table of contents that resembles left-hand navigation.
So imagine my disappointment to find that Sosland named its new magazine Food Business News without buying the domain name foodbusinessnews.com. That URL will take you to a site from the World News portal. To see Sosland's magazine, you'll have to visit foodbusinessnews.net.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
State of the News Media, part 2
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the "State of the News Media" report is its suggestion that the mainstream media seems ill-equipped to deal with the changes brought by blogs, RSS feeds, etc. There are "signs of frustration, lack of innovation and the caution of the old media applied to the new," the report says.
After my trip last week to the Midwest, I'll admit I share the report's concern.
It seems to me that too much of the media simply won't look at what is happening. Media folk, strangely enough, have managed to cut themselves off from information about new media.
At the conference at Northwest Missouri State, I met broadcasters who had never heard of podcasting; talked with advertising executives who weren't familiar with craigslist; and lunched with journalists who had never read any of the world's 7.8 million blogs, hadn't heard of Dan Gillmor, and were unaware of the ongoing argument that objectivity should be replaced with transparency.
That's akin to meeting a group of petroleum executives who had never heard of the Exxon Valdez. Certainly there's room for debate on these issues. But how can anyone at this date be unaware that the debate has begun?
After my trip last week to the Midwest, I'll admit I share the report's concern.
It seems to me that too much of the media simply won't look at what is happening. Media folk, strangely enough, have managed to cut themselves off from information about new media.
At the conference at Northwest Missouri State, I met broadcasters who had never heard of podcasting; talked with advertising executives who weren't familiar with craigslist; and lunched with journalists who had never read any of the world's 7.8 million blogs, hadn't heard of Dan Gillmor, and were unaware of the ongoing argument that objectivity should be replaced with transparency.
That's akin to meeting a group of petroleum executives who had never heard of the Exxon Valdez. Certainly there's room for debate on these issues. But how can anyone at this date be unaware that the debate has begun?
State of the News Media -- be more like B2B press
The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its 600-page, navel-gazing opus: "The State of the News Media." If you don't have time to read the entire report, at least glance through the "Five Major Trends" section in the overview.
The report suggests that the blogging phenomenon demands a new breed of specialist expert replace the generalist journalist in the typical newsroom. Such a move, the report says, would help journalists "inoculate their work from the rapid citizen review that increasingly will occur online and elsewhere."
I hope that is not meant to imply that the solution to the woes of the elitist press is more elitism.
Instead, I'd like to think the report is suggesting that mainstream journalists become more like trade journalists. Those of us in the trade press have long accepted that our role is less about "explaining" or "gatekeeping" than it is about engaging in an informed conversation among peers.
Good B2B journalism is about dialog, and dialog is a natural function of reporting in a world where sources, reporters and readers are equals.
The report suggests that the blogging phenomenon demands a new breed of specialist expert replace the generalist journalist in the typical newsroom. Such a move, the report says, would help journalists "inoculate their work from the rapid citizen review that increasingly will occur online and elsewhere."
I hope that is not meant to imply that the solution to the woes of the elitist press is more elitism.
Instead, I'd like to think the report is suggesting that mainstream journalists become more like trade journalists. Those of us in the trade press have long accepted that our role is less about "explaining" or "gatekeeping" than it is about engaging in an informed conversation among peers.
Good B2B journalism is about dialog, and dialog is a natural function of reporting in a world where sources, reporters and readers are equals.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Goin' to Kansas City. Kansas City here I come
I'll be in Kansas City for a week to visit friends, former coworkers and business associates. I'll also be visiting the campus of Northwest Missouri State University. It's time for the annual meeting of the Department of Mass Communications' professional advisory committee, of which I'm a member. With some luck, I'll pick up a few interesting tidbits to share on this blog.
While I'm away, I won't be updating this site.
So I'm going to ask everyone in the trade journalism world .... if it's not too much trouble ... don't do anything interesting until I get back.
While I'm away, I won't be updating this site.
So I'm going to ask everyone in the trade journalism world .... if it's not too much trouble ... don't do anything interesting until I get back.
Two ideas for design
I'm not a design person. I'm not even particularly visual.
But I know what I like in design.
Two new items (I'm not sure what to call them...design systems? design concepts?) have emerged in the past few days. And they have captured my attention, if not my heart.
First, is the EmPRINT project from my alma mater, the journalism school at the University of Missouri-Columbia. I'm afraid I tend to agree with Adrian Holovaty, who dismisses the project as a "glorified PDF file." Nonetheless, I'm trying to keep an open mind and have signed up to participate in the field test.
Second is the print version of the April issue of The Atlantic Monthly, which is using a sort of Web-era, footnotes-like, text-can-be-like-hypertext format in its cover story. The writer is David Foster Wallace, the author whose work is most likely to be described as "sprawling." So footnotes of some sort are to be expected.
I'm not as excited by this as my fellow B2B blogger David Shaw. I find Wallace pompous and exhausting -- and my first reaction to the layout of Atlantic article is annoyance. But it's worth a look. If you don't have a subscription, visit this discussion about the future of books and click on the graphic for a peek.
But I know what I like in design.
Two new items (I'm not sure what to call them...design systems? design concepts?) have emerged in the past few days. And they have captured my attention, if not my heart.
First, is the EmPRINT project from my alma mater, the journalism school at the University of Missouri-Columbia. I'm afraid I tend to agree with Adrian Holovaty, who dismisses the project as a "glorified PDF file." Nonetheless, I'm trying to keep an open mind and have signed up to participate in the field test.
Second is the print version of the April issue of The Atlantic Monthly, which is using a sort of Web-era, footnotes-like, text-can-be-like-hypertext format in its cover story. The writer is David Foster Wallace, the author whose work is most likely to be described as "sprawling." So footnotes of some sort are to be expected.
I'm not as excited by this as my fellow B2B blogger David Shaw. I find Wallace pompous and exhausting -- and my first reaction to the layout of Atlantic article is annoyance. But it's worth a look. If you don't have a subscription, visit this discussion about the future of books and click on the graphic for a peek.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)