The special feature is officially up and live at www.stripes.com/armynavy.

It has been up for a few days now, but I finally have some time to discuss it a bit. We currently have four stories/features, an audio slide show, several photos and quotes from people at the academies and fans. Each day we’ll be adding more content, and Saturday will be a big day for content (multiple stories, multiple photo galleries, audio, maybe some audio slide shows, etc).

Tomorrow, for instance, we’ll be doing our second audio slide show. The first one was of the Navy cheerleaders and band running through the halls firing up their supporters, while they played music and chanted. Some important Navy people also briefly spoke after the Midshipmen came to their offices for special visits.

It’s one of those experiences that is very hard to describe. Imagine a pep ralley on steroids through the halls of the Pentagon. Imagine a pep rally where you got to taunt your emeny.

The Navy cheerleaders and band roamed several miles of Pentagon corridors, causing quite a ruckus. They made sure to let the Army people know that Navy has won the past five games.

The juxtaposition of such a serious building with the pageantry and color that is Army-Navy is almost comical, but it’s powerful nonetheless. It’s pretty amazing to see how into the game everyone is at the Pentagon. I thought about writing a story and putting some photos with that, but I realized that’s not the best way to tell this story.

Writing a story sure would have been easier, but you need to hear and see what happens this week in the Pentagon. I could tell you about it, but a lot of people wouldn’t believe me. Or they’d think it was minor.

It was really loud and peppy. It really reminded me of a high school pep rally. There was an innocence and fun to it that most college pep rallies can’t capture. And my ears still hurt from following Navy around for an hour.

Tomorrow, I get to it all over again, this time with Army.

This is one of those projects that pushes what I can do. I’ve written stories, taken photos, captured and edited audio, designed a site, created an audio slide show and coded (X)HTML, CSS and Ajax. That’s what online journalism is all about.

You got to do needs to be done. I don’t enjoy doing all those things equally, but it was the only way for this package to be done right. I really wished I could have done video, but that was out of my hands.

The special feature is important for my paper. We’re Star and Stripes. This is Army-Navy.

This is our story.

We own it.

Would you hire someone who:

Doesn’t have a facebook or MySpace account?

Doesn’t know what del.icio.us is?

Doesn’t know the difference between a site like Twitter and facebook?

Doesn’t regularly read non-MSM media like blogs?

Doesn’t subscribe to high-speed Internet?

Are these even questions that your work asks of new journalists? Would your answers be different for a reporting position versus a Web producer position?

Update: the feature is up. I’ll be adding new content each day. You can find it at http://www.stripes.com/armynavy

This Saturday is the 108th Army-Navy Game, which means I’ll be really busy this week.

I apologize if the updates are slow, but I’m already skipping my weekend (Tuesday and Wednesday) to get this feature done. I will still post delicious links from time to time and respond to your comments, but I’m not sure if I’ll have any big, full-featured posts. Although, who knows, maybe I’ll need a break or two.

The Army-Navy Game is a big deal for a paper like Stars and Stripes. We have a circulation of just over 100,000, and most of our online readers do not read the print edition (which expands our reach). It’s one of the biggest rivalries in all of sports, and it is one our readers take very seriously.

We can’t let our readers down, and we should own this story.

I’ll be designing and coding the special feature, which should be launching tomorrow. I’ll also be writing stories (two down so far) about the game, the players and at least one story after I attend the game. Tomorrow will be a big day for audio for this project, and I hope to get some clips up ASAP.

I am also compiling stats, and we plan on doing multiple photo galleries. If you have any suggestions for what you as a fan would like to see, don’t hesitate to tell me. This feature is for the fans, not the journalists.

I’m also decided to accept comments, audio files and videos from fans about the big game. Anyone who is a fan of one of the two academies or affiliated with with the U.S. military is encouraged to e-mail armynavygame@gmail.com and sound off. Files must be under 20 megabytes.

It’s a lot of work but a ton of fun.

P.S. I’ll be doing some a lot micro blogging about the project over at Twitter: http://twitter.com/jiconoclast. And I might do some short posts about how it is going, what problems I have encountered (I love you Internet Explorer 6!) and what has been going well.

Newspapers and Web sites are two different mediums and should be treated as such.

Every newspapers has at least a few features, stories or other items that don’t translate well to the Web. If print products don’t make sense on the Web, don’t put them on the Web. We make Web products that clearly don’t make it into the print product, and the same logic applies the Web.

I know this sounds like blasphemy, but it’s not that difficult. The purpose of a Web site is not to make a digital version of the print product or to archive the print product. It’s purpose is to augment and expand print coverage. It’s purpose is to take your news brand and your talent and make a product that could stand on its own — a product that is centered around the medium it is on.

Most newspapers have at least a few features that serve one purpose: to take up space. I know people hate to admit this, but not every inch of editorial content is there to serve the reader. Some of it is to take up space and fit around ads.

The “man on the street” features are often prime offenders. You don’t need to put those features on the Web. There is no space to fill up.

In fact, the more you put on your Web site, the less the rest of your content stands out. The last thing any newspaper would want to do is drown out the quality stories and features with filler content. Most newspaper Web sites suffer from the Wall of News — something that is to be avoided at all costs.

The solution is simple: be judicious with what you put in your Web product, be willing to rework content to make it Web friendly and make Web exclusive content. Your two products don’t have to mirror each other in content. They should each do what they do best.

The best news organizations have a synergy between their products. In the coming years, the best newspapers will have in-depth analysis pieces in their print products, great feature stories and second-day pieces that look at news from a different angle, while the Web product will provide breaking news, databases, multimedia, two-way communication and other Web content that the Web excels at.

By Kate McLoughlin

I realized something about online journalism today while shopping on
oldnavy.com: Newspapers could learn a lot from the retail world.

For whatever reason, well-known companies that sell clothes,
electronics, toys, etc. have made what some would consider a seamless
transition into the Internet age. They have not been shown up by
Web-only stores, though a large number of those Web-only stores popped up.

Take a store like Old Navy. Or, for argument’s sake, let’s say the
Gap, since it was founded before the Web. The Gap took off after it
was launched in 1969 — by the early 1970s, the U.S. had dozens of Gap
stores. Then, in the early 1990s, people started talking about the
Internet. Newspaper people heard them talking, and Gap’s people heard
them talking.

So why does the Gap have a Web site that features its products like
this: http://www.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=13658&pid=502767 while
newspapers have Web sites that feature their products like this:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5313409.html …?

Is a pleated silk-tie dress that much more exciting than someone
getting 15 years in a murder plot…or, does the Gap just convince you
it is? I like the dress, but I’m sure the murder plot story would be
more enlightening to look at for 10 minutes. The difference between
the sites, in my opinion? The Gap doesn’t take visitors to its Web
site for granted — no matter how many people look at that dress, if
no one buys it, they’re not making money. Newspapers, on the other
hand, seem to think that all they have to do is get people onto their
sites and they’ll be all set. They need to take a lesson from the Gap
and learn to keep them there, engaged and looking for more.

The Gap dresses up every single one of its products the best it can –
zoom in to see detail on the hemline, see several views of the dress,
read about what fabric it’s made of, read a description of the
dress and learn whether it needs to be dry-cleaned — they’re giving
people the same information, and often more, than they’d get in the
store. They even suggest other products you might like (with photos).

Newspapers aren’t there yet.

If a journalist-minded guy designed this site, I wouldn’t be surprised
to hear him object to showing the back side of the dress or any other
article of clothing.

“If they want that information, they can come into the store!” he
would say. “We need them here — that’s how we make money…people
always end up seeing more things to buy when they set foot in a
store.”

You know, kind of like…”If people want that information, they’ll
have to buy a copy of the paper!” For whatever reason, the Gap
realizes people most likely won’t come into the store to find out what
a dress is made of, while many newspaper people are still telling
themselves that withholding photos, parts of stories or updates will
drive people to their print edition. It doesn’t happen.

Speaking of updates, when was the last time you saw the Gap (or any
other retailer for that matter) have an old update sitting on its
site? Example: It’s Saturday and the Gap is advertising for its
blowout Black Friday sale, which ended Friday night. I don’t think
I’ve ever seen a mistake like that in retail; I see old/expired
stories posted as updates on newspaper sites all the time.

What really gets me wondering is the fact that online clothing stores
like the Gap face so many challenges newspapers do not, yet they’ve
been able to use the Web to their advantage. Readers don’t
need to try their newspaper on before they know whether they want the
information…they don’t need to feel the material to decide if
they’ll want to hold it …they don’t have to wonder if the color they
see on their screens is true to the color of the garment. Oh, and
there’s no shipping and handling issues.

And it’s a good thing retailers are paying attention to the Web –
it’s been playing a bigger and bigger role in consumer decisions.

According to research being released today by Shop.org, which is part
of the NRF, and BIGresearch, the Internet will influence 30.2 percent of
holiday sales this year, up from 28.9 percent last year.

Oh, and you can’t ignore the fact that more than 70 percent of holiday
shoppers plan to go online rather than wait in line, as cnn.com puts
it. Only 6 percent of shoppers are going to avoid the Web altogether. And
journalists think THEIR audiences are “straying” into the online world …

The blogverse have been inflamed about which journalists get “it” and are willing to embrace online journalism.

Their is a disturbing paradox, however, that surrounds which journalists are willing to embrace online journalism and add new skills to their
repertoire. The journalists who grew up with computers and the Web are often the ones least willing to work on the Web, while other journalists who didn’t discover the Web until they were much older are the ones most willing to experiment. Howard Owens recognizes this phenomenon when he visits newsrooms:

The kids right out of college, they’re the ones most likely to cling to a romanticism about being the crusading print reporter. When I talk about web-first publishing, they’re the ones most likely to say, “but won’t we scoop ourselves?” Or when handed a video camera, they say, “but I got in this business to be a writer.”

As a 23-year-old recent j-school grad, I have to unfortunately agree that it is often the youngest journalists who are the least willing to try new things, but it isn’t entirely their fault. Or even primarily their own doing. No, j-schools have a lot to answer for.

It is those supposed schools of higher education and enlightened thinking that are turning out dark-age students. It is those schools that are staffed by glib professors who often fear online journalism or disparage it. They live in a fantasy world of tenure and do not have to learn the latest tools of our craft — or the realities of the industry.

Honestly, what do we expect from students? Are we saying that they should have the foresight that their own teachers do not? Are we saying that they should know better than the people they are paying thousands of dollars a year to learn from?

Absolutely not. J-schools need to start teaching students what they need to know. They need to start telling them the realities on the ground. This is not a pretty time to join the journalism world, and it certainly isn’t a writers dream. The truth is simple: j-students need to know more than just words to succeed in a digital world.

They need to know how to work for a 21st-century news organization. They need to know how to utilize their reporting skills for a variety of formats, whether it be written, video, database, audio, flash, etc.

Professors are held in high esteem by students and students take them at their word. If a professor makes clear that journalists need to expand their skill sets and learn some online journalism skills or new media, then students will believe them. That, however, is often not the case, because many professors often belittle the world of online journalism. Paul Conley heard several disturbing things at the latest National College Media Convention:

1. A senior who said his journalism teachers told him he should never tell a prospective employer he knows how to shoot photos, because it means he’ll never get a chance to write.
2. A student who said her adviser told her she should never, ever mention her college newspaper’s Web site on her resume, because no magazine will hire someone who has written for the Web.
3. A student who said she was told by teachers that newspaper design was a booming field.
4. A slew of students who seemed unaware of the financial and circulation challenges the print media industry is facing.
5. At least a dozen students who said they want to be “writers” and that have zero interest in working on any Web-based product.

That’s what our j-schools are spitting out and that’s the advice that professors are giving their students. That’s shocking and could have long-term negative effects on the industry. But many mid-career journalists have a different view of journalism.

Mid-career journalists have different motivations than new graduates, and they are far beyond their college days. Many mid-career journalists are embracing online journalism because they want to keep their jobs or believe it is the path to advancement. Many of them realize this is the way of the future and this is what must be done.

And frankly, they’re professionals, and professionals understand that they have a job to do, and it’s got to get done, regardless of what they may have done in the past. Many of them have probably already seen big changes in the industry over the years. All industries change over time, and it is the professionals that make those changes as seamless as possible.

Recent graduates, however, often have a romantic view of journalism. They want to Woodward and Bernstein. They want to discover the next Watergate and write like Truman Capote.

That’s all great, but students also need to realize that being the next Woodward and Bernstein may require more than just writing. It might require using a database to tell the story. Maybe video will help tell the story.

Who knows? But the great stories of the 21st-century will often be told from multiple angles — not just the written one.

Some students, professors and programs do get it. Megan Taylor is one of those j-school students who gets it, but only after an ah-ha moment during her HTML/CSS class. Online journalism wasn’t discussed much in most of her classes, nor were the realities of the industries hammered home to her.

My perception is that the problem with recent grads is less one of close-mindedness, but a problem that goes back to the j-schools. If I hadn’t taken that first class, if I didn’t have the proclivity towards all things computer, I may never have been bitten by the online journalism bug. After all, I can’t draw and I’ve been discouraged by visual classes all my life, so I avoided design classes like the plague until very recently.

Few teachers in the print realm ever mentioned the possibilities of online journalism. And at the University of Florida, none of the online classes are required. So students who don’t get the Web, don’t get online journalism. Students who spend hours a day on Facebook, don’t get online journalism. Students who don’t take that first step, don’t get online journalism.

So the real question is, why aren’t they taking that first step? Or why aren’t j-schools forcing it down their throats?

Taylor goes to the University of Florida, home to one of the best online journalism professors in Mindy McAdams. But McAdams is just one professor, and there are not enough professors out there like her.

Professors and j-schools need to wake up and start giving students the skills they need. Perhaps young journalists are so unwilling to work on the Web because they just got out of j-school and are being told their skills are obsolete. Imagine spending four years or so, and a lot of money, only to learn that what you learned isn’t enough to get you a job.

That’s horrible, and there are a lot of professors that should be ashamed of themselves.

Top democratic politicians have introduced legislation that could cause universities to lose financial aid if they don’t provide deterrents against digital piracy and provide alternatives to piracy, such as subscription services for music and movies for all students.

Basically, the legislation is charging universities with the responsibility of policing their networks and stopping digital piracy. Why we need another law for digital piracy that just targets universities is beyond me. We are all aware that piracy is illegal and there are already laws that deal with it.

Is there a special law being proposed to penalize Comcast or Verizon if people use their networks illegally?

But that’s not the worst part. Universities have to provide alternatives — AKA a guaranteed revenue stream to the RIAA and MPAA. Yes, you heard that correctly. They could be forced to purchase subscription services for students, even though students are free to purchase music, movies and TV shows legally from sources like iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody, Best Buy, etc, etc, etc.

They would be forced to pay money to the RIAA and MPAA, even though both industries have been hit hard by piracy because their products aren’t that good and their prices are way to high. Plus, they have refused for years to give users products in the formats people want, but now lawmakers could change all of that and give them a revenue stream they don’t deserve.

That’s the power of big lobbies in this country. They can convince stupid politicians (Reps. George Miller from California and Ruben Hinojosa of Texas to name a few) to propose ridiculous laws that would help big business and hurt everyday Americans. But that’s not the worst part.

No, the worst part is that financial aid is being threatened. Can you imagine taking away the money that many students need to get a higher education because of the actions of a few students? Could you imagine putting the interests of the RIAA and MPAA over the interest of this country to educate our citizens?

According to the bill, if universities did not agree to test “technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity,” all of their students–even ones who don’t own a computer–would lose federal financial aid.

The prospect of losing a combined total of nearly $100 billion a year in federal financial aid, coupled with the possibility of overzealous copyright-bots limiting the sharing of legitimate content, has alarmed university officials.

“Such an extraordinarily inappropriate and punitive outcome would result in all students on that campus losing their federal financial aid–including Pell grants and student loans that are essential to their ability to attend college, advance their education, and acquire the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century economy,” a letter from university officials to Congress written on Wednesday said. “Lower-income students, those most in need of federal financial aid, would be harmed most under the entertainment industry’s proposal.”

That’s a scary future, and the bill officially made it through committee on Nov. 15. But I can’t articulate this as well as some industry professionals.

Stop whatever you are doing and listen to the first few minutes of the Buzz Out Loud Podcast from Nov. 16. Three of their journalists discuss the proposed legislation and the impact it could have on students, especially lower income students who may not even be breaking the law. It’s horrific that any self-respecting politician could think this was a good idea.

Call and write your congressman or congresswoman and let them know how unacceptable this. Lobby the RIAA and MPAA, because this is incredibly unAmerican and ridiculous.

Today is your lucky day if you find www.patthorntonfiles.com/blog too difficult a domain to remember.

The Journalism Iconoclast can now be accessed via www.journalismiconoclast.com as well. Yes, it is a great day for people with poor memories.

But you didn’t think I’d purchase a new domain just as a forwarding service, did you? Big things are in store, but that’s for a later date. For now, enjoy the easier to remember domain name.

Also, you can keep up-to-date on my latest happenings via my Twitter feed at www.patthorntonfiles.com. My Twitter name is jiconoclast, because journalismiconoclast is too long of a name for Twitter. I’m not sure if Twitter and I are destined to have a long-term partnership.

I’m not proud of it, but I did it anyway.

Yes, I signed a new contact with “the new” AT&T Wireless. How could I you might ask? Well, it’s simple, the iPhone.

No, I didn’t purchase an iPhone, yet. I’m waiting until after Macworld this January to make that decision, but if the iPhone was available on any carrier, I wouldn’t have gone with AT&T. It just doesn’t work in more places.

But I want an iPhone. It just makes sense for me. Everyday I bring three pieces of electronics to work with me: cell phone, iPod and PDA.

The iPhone is all of that, and unlike every other smart phone out there, the iPhone does the music player part really well, which is crucial to me because I spend hours a day on public transportation and walking around D.C. and Alexandria. Also, the iPhone has by far the best mobile browsing experience. Safari crushes any WAP browser out there.

The one part that some smart phones do better, e-mail, doesn’t matter that much to me. I don’t really care about sending out e-mails to people on a tiny device, nor does work control my life. I do, however, like to surf the Web while I am on the go, and I listen to hours of music a day, which is a big reason why I want to wait . The current iPhone is 8 gigs, but the iPod Touch has up to 16 gigs, leading me to believe we’ll see a 16 (or even higher) capacity iPhone early next year.

Plus, I wouldn’t mind 3G support. A GPS wouldn’t hurt either, but that’s not a major feature for me in a cell phone. I needed a new phone and a new contract new right now, however, because my current contract is up and my current phone didn’t really work.

This whole situation, however, points to a major problem with the U.S. cellular industry. In the U.S., which is not how it is everywhere in the world, many phones and features are tied to certain carriers. AT&T has an exclusive deal with Apple for the iPhone, Verizon cripples features on most of its phones, etc. That’s just how it goes, and that’s not good for consumers.

The whole cellular industry is based off of subsidized phones. If you sign a two-year contract you can get a phone for free or cheap. America is ready, however, for a market where phones are no longer subsidized, freeing us from being tied to contracts for years at a time.

Imagine just purchasing a new phone every few years for $50-200 or so and being able to run it on whatever network you wanted. Don’t like AT&T? Try Verizon. That doesn’t work for you? Try another career the next month.

Yes, I could have purchased my phone from AT&T for “full cost,” without a contract but AT&T wanted to charge me way more than it is worth. It’s a sad state of affairs that ties customers to carriers and phones for years at a time. Plus, carriers like Verizon cripple their phones.

Why? Because they can.

For the record, if the iPhone would have worked on any carrier, I would have went with T-mobile. A man can dream, can’t he?

Which is why it is very important to build for Web standards.

If you or your company just builds for Internet Explorer, not only are you building for a browser that is behind the times (and just terrible, just terrible), but you also might be alienating some of your users. Or a lot of your users.

Firefox is the No. 1 browser that comes to The Journalism Iconoclast and my personal site, The Pat Thornton Files. Yes, you read that right. 50.52% of JI readers use Firefox, compared to 36.79% using Internet Explorer. Most of those IE readers are probably coming from work where they have no choice and their soul is being sucked from them.

Apple’s insurgent, and blazingly fast, Safari commands 9.43% of my browser share (it is much better on OS X than on XP or Vista, which is Apple’s fault). The rest of JI users are primarily made up of Mozilla variants. Can you imagine if this site was built for Internet Explorer, a non-standards-complaint browser?

Man, would Web traffic be down — way down. But it’s not. You want to know why?

When I build a Web site, I build it for standards-complaint browsers first, like Firefox (Mozilla), Safari and Opera (Oh, Opera are you still there?). I then fix it for Internet Explorer. I don’t cater to a non-standards-complaint browser that will make it tough for me to get my site up and running on the rest of the world’s browsers.

But, of course, I always make sure my sites work under Internet Explorer, because it is still the dominant browser for the majority of Internet traffic. If someone, however, tells you that you only need to get a site working under Internet Explorer because “that’s what everyone uses,” smack them.

Smack them hard. You never know what your individual users will use. 20.30% of JI visitors use a Mac, despite the Mac having a 5 percent world market share.

That’s why I always build sites to work across all platforms. You just never know. And with more and more people coming to sites from mobile platforms, like the iPhone, standards compliance is even more important.

The iPhone runs off of the open source WebKit framework, which is the basis for Safari. Google’s new mobile platform Android also runs off of WebKit. Go ahead and build sites just for IE, they won’t work on the future, which is mobile.

All this points to, of course, is that JI readers are smarter, better educated and, well, more iconoclastic than your average computer user. And for that, I thank you.