Does the tenure system make sense for journalism professors?

Tenure serves a vital purpose for many disciplines and professors, especially since a lot of ideas and research are controversial — at least at the time (Remember when the Earth was flat?). Tenure serves to protect the academic honesty of educational institutions and their faculty. With tenure a person is free to question everything, which often is how our most groundbreaking ideas are conceived.

I’m not sure if that purpose is served with journalism schools. Journalism education is much closer to trade school than to a typical liberal arts education. J-school is very much a skill — not idea — based curriculum.

I majored in both political science and journalism. They were completely different majors in terms of how they were taught. Political science was all about ideas and analyzing those ideas. Political science teaches one to think critically about the world, but a political science degree is not direct preparation for any one job or field.

J-school is all about learning skills to be a journalist — that’s all it really is. In fact, many programs are not only conceived to help someone become a journalist, but even a particular kind of journalist — like broadcast or newspaper. But a journalism degree isn’t even a requirement for being a journalist (many papers still employ people without bachelors degrees, because journalism doesn’t really require a liberal arts education to be successful).

I took a class in publication design as an undergrad. That’s not a real liberal arts skill. Yet, I never had a political science class in something like “how to work for a think tank.” Everything in political science was on a much more academic level.

Yes, journalism made me a much better writer and researcher, which would benefit anyone. But many of my classes were very much terminal classes — all about learning a particular skill that a newspaper would need.

All this brings me back to the question: Does the tenure system make sense for journalism professors? I can’t really think of any sort of controversial research that journalism schools do. Nor is journalism even about research (maybe if journalism schools were more progressive and aggressive we wouldn’t have this huge mess we do right now).

In fact, one might argue that tenured professors hold back many journalism programs from being more modern and aggressive in trying new things. This is just an idea though. Maybe tenure has a firm place in journalism education for certain professors.

But maybe it doesn’t.

Don’t believe me on how important SEO is for a Web site?

My most popular post today was not written this week. Or last. No, it’s a post from all the way back on Feb. 11.

Ironically, that post was about how “Newspapers need to learn SEO for headlines.” Yes, I would say it’s one of the strongest posts of this month, but that’s not enough to justify it being by far the most popular post on the JI today, especially since that post hasn’t gotten serious traffic in about a week. It’s safe to say that SEO has something to do with the post’s continued popularity (it has gotten traffic every day since its release).

It’s not enough to just produce good content on the Web. Without proper consideration being given to search engine traffic, a Web site will miss out on a lot of users and audience growth.

Some sites get a majority of their traffic from search engines. That’s the organic nature of the Web. Users pull content on the Web, unlike traditional mediums which push content to users.

Look at the headline for the post in question: “Newspapers need to learn SEO for headlines.” It’s not a cute headline by any stretch of the imagination. It’s very matter of fact, which works very well for SEO.

It has newspapers, learn, SEO and headlines in the headline. A headline filled with keywords will drive a lot more traffic. More traffic = more money.

Name one Web site that would benefit from that formula?

By now most of you have probably heard that Prince Harry has been secretly serving in Afghanistan.

The Drudge Report, not major media outlets like CNN or The New York Times was the first American outlet to break the story (there is some dispute about whether or not Drudge was the first in the world or not to report on this). This is a complex story, however.

British media outlets knew Prince Harry was in Afghanistan for months and agreed not to report on the issue. Now that the cat is out of the bag papers like The Guardian have decided to confirm that Prince Harry has been in Afghanistan since December.

Details of Harry’s deployment were blacked out, with all forms of British media signing up to a reporting embargo. Close friends and many senior generals were also not aware of the prince’s plans, in a bid to prevent the Taliban being inadvertently alerted.

In an interview with the press just before his Afghan deployment, the prince said: “I would never want to put someone else’s life in danger when they have to sit next to the bullet magnet.

To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about the arrangement. I respect the desire to not make Prince Harry’s unit a bigger target for the Taliban than it already was. I do think it’s inappropriate to try to protect Prince Harry more than a typical soldier would be, but it makes sense to try to limit the danger that his fellow soldiers are in. On the other hand, I don’t like the idea of the media complying with government wishes to keep information from the public secret.

Perhaps the biggest question, however, is this: Did the Royal Family and the U.K. Press really believe that something like this could be kept secret in the Internet age? Are they that out of touch with how new media and the Internet work? Even if they could have realistically kept this a secret through traditional press, it seems highly unlikely that this wouldn’t eventually show up on the Internet.

Rule No. 1 about the Internet: The Internet always finds out.

The other big question is did the Main Stream Media in the U.S. know about Prince Harry’s deployment? Did they make the same agreement? Is that even an appropriate agreement for the U.S. media to make with a foreign government?

Or, perhaps worse, did the U.S. MSM get beat once again by a much nimbler new media foe? CNN.com is calling this “breaking news,” which leads me to believe if they had known about it sooner they would have broken it before Drudge.

Rule No. 2 about the Internet: Being nimble pays dividends.

Is the MSM media nimble enough to survive on the Internet?

Twitter is unlike any other social network I belong to.

It’s not about sharing photos with friends or writing on someone’s wall or about resumes or news. Twitter is a very organic social networking experience, where people microblog their thoughts and lives. Virtually every other social network I belong to revolves around connecting with people I’ve met — friends, family, business contacts.

Twitter is not about connecting with people. It’s about connecting with ideas. If you only follow my blog and not my Twitter feed, you’ll miss many of my thoughts and ideas.

Throughout the day I might have a thought worth sharing, but that doesn’t always mean it’s worth a full-fledged blog post or that I even want to take the time to write a blog post. Sometimes I just need to get something out in 140 characters or less.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Twitter is how I have never met any of my Twitter followers (or the people I follow) in real life. In stark contract, I have met the vast majority of my Facebook friends. In fact, I don’t publicize that I have been a longtime, avid Facebook user because I view Facebook as a way to keep in touch with my friends and family.

I don’t use Facebook for professional reasons, nor do I use it to meet new people. Twitter is the opposite. I use Twitter to share my thoughts with like-minded individuals, and I am always searching for new people to connect with.

Many of the people I follow and my followers are my intellectual friends. Twitter is a powerful idea, albeit 140 characters at a time. It’s character limit may seem constricting at first, but it is a great introduction to blogging and online community building.

If there was one social network journalism students could learn the most from it would be Twitter. In fact, many professional publications are now using Twitter to share news with readers. I follow Guardian Tech on Twitter.

I invite you all to Tweet with me: http://twitter.com/jiconoclast

Education doesn’t just stop when a person is handed a diploma.

In fact, colleges and universities are not trade schools. They are not in the business of just giving people skills to do a job (like say work for a newspaper) — they are in the business of giving students skills for life. A good college education expands ones mind and teaches critical thinking.

An education like that can be used to foster a lifetime of learning. People who are at the top of their professions are often lifelong students, constantly learning, asking questions, seeking answers and never accepting the status quo from themselves. Certain professions like doctors and lawyers require continual learning.

Learning can be in the traditional sense like signing up for a class or two or even embarking on a new degree. But learning can also be as simple as being a voracious reader of books, magazines, newspapers and Web sites. Tools like Google Reader help me more efficiently consume information and manage disparate information.

Unlike college, learning doesn’t have to cost money. The Web is filled with many free resources that are phenomenal (people’s del.icio.us links are often an excellent resource). And even some prestigious universities like UC Berkeley are offering free Webcasts of many of their lectures. I’m following along with Computer Science 61A.

Why not? It’s free, and I want to learn more about the nuts and bolts of computer science.

If you’re a journalist who wasn’t taught anything online while in school, don’t fret. Your education gave you the tools to keep learning, and there are plenty of free and low cost resources available to learn whatever online skills you need.

The only thing you ever need for learning is time.

Will Sullivan over at Journerdism has a great post with resources on how to get a better job.

He has 94 resources to help people with networking, resumes, interviewing and negotiating and places to find jobs. Even if you have a job, some of the resources can help you negotiate a better raise or a new position at your company. Newspapers are businesses, and if you don’t want to get stepped on, you better know how to play business.

His post is also a phenomenal resource for upcoming journalism grads. Here is my quick advice: make sure you have a dynamite digital resume (a printed one is OK to have around too), apply to jobs that you’ll enjoy (don’t just apply to random jobs, because it might show up in your interviews and you may not enjoy the job even if you get it), research the hell out of any company that asks you to come in for an interview, dress professionally (I’ve always gotten an offer when I wear my pinstripe suit) and learn how to interview well.

It doesn’t matter how good your resume and portfolio are if you bomb the interview. You have to sell yourself when you interview by demonstrating how your skills will be beneficial to the company you are interviewing with. It’s also very, very important to know how to negotiate when it comes to money, whether it is for a job offer or for a raise.

Your first salary out of college can greatly impact how much you make for the rest of your life. If you start off with a below market salary, it will impact every raise you get. If person A starts at $30,000 and person B at $35,000, their salaries could quickly diverge even further.

A 10 percent raise puts them at $33,000 and $38,500. Another 10 percent raise puts them at $36,300 and $42,350. What started as a $5,000 difference in salary became a $6,050 difference in just two raises. Every raise that person B gets will amplify his salary even more over person A’s.

Holiday pay? Person B will benefit more from that. 401(k) and retirement? Person B will benefit more.

Virtually every job offer has room for negotiation. It’s rare that a company will offer a candidate its best offer right off the bat. That doesn’t stop most people from accepting that offer. Remember, when negotiating money and benefits, it’s never about what you need, it’s always about what you’re worth.

This is a new weekly feature debuting today at the JI. Every week I’ll take a look at a student newspaper Web site, feature on that site, story or other content that I like.

The inaugural College High Five of the Week goes to The Independent Florida Alligator for its Best Photos of the Week in News feature. Here is why I like this feature: it’s an easy way to get more life out of content, while also serving users better. Does it get any better then that?

Basically, Alligator staffers select the best staff photos of the week, put them in a slide show and boom they have new content. First, people love photos. Whenever you can get mileage out of photos, do it.

Second, this feature is a showcase for a newspaper’s best work. By showcasing its best photos, newspapers can use them as a launching pad to get people to consume more content. Like that photo? Maybe you’ll like the story that goes with it.

Finally, this is an easy, Web-only feature that people enjoy. People enjoy looking at photos, especially good photos. I guarantee you that even your regular users will probably miss a few of your best photos each week.

It happens. Users will appreciate that you are highlighting your best work for them.

Now, there are a few ways to improve this feature. First, it would be much cooler if instead of putting the photos into Soundslides, the Alligator put each photo into a database. I’m pretty sure the Alligator does it the way they do because of CMS limitations.

This would allow the Alligator to track the page views for each photo. Also, each photo could have a rating from 1-5 stars. This would allow users to see what their peers thought was cool.

Let’s take this concept a step further. What if every photo on the Alligator’s site was rateable and tracked page views? Then the Web site could automatically create a most popular photo gallery every week by either page views or by rating. Those galleries could then be compared to what the Alligator staff thought were the best photos.

I think this would be a huge way of getting more life out of existing content. I don’t believe any newspaper does the concept I have discussed here, mostly due to CMS limitations. It would take a very Web-first CMS to make this happen (most newspaper CMSes are very print-content centric). But just because you don’t have a great CMS (and who does?) doesn’t mean you can’t make cool features.

That’s what the Alligator has done here. Instead of worrying about what they can’t do, they have figured out what they can.

If you would like to nominate a collegiate newspaper Web site, story or feature send an e-mail to connect (at) patthorntonfiles (dot) com.

Many journalists are loathe to care about what readers/users want to read and consume, but if you don’t have readers you don’t have a newspaper.

Far too many journalists have a journalistic arrogance, as Sam Zell put it. This arrogance journalists them to believe that only they know what is and what isn’t news. These journalists don’t care what readers and users want, because journalists know best.

But Zell is right. A lot of journalists are arrogant for thinking they know best. Most newspapers are owned by corporations, which means they are firmly a for-profit business.

You don’t make money (or hire new people or give employees raises) if employees don’t care what consumers want. Newspapers probably shouldn’t be owned by large publicly-held companies, but that’s the reality on the ground. Let’s be honest for a moment — the vast majority of journalism isn’t big Fourth Estate Journalism.

The vast majority of journalism doesn’t expose government corruption, mob activity or corporate greed. No the majority of journalism is community journalism. It’s journalism that journalists want to cover because they enjoy it or because they believe it is news.

That small journalism needs to support big Journalism. The New York Times spends $3 million a year on it’s Baghdad Bureau. You can’t cover Iraq without something subsidizing that coverage.

Zell recently told employees of the Daily Press that journalists need to focus on what readers want.

The news operation “has to be part of the solution, not part of the problem,” he said. “If we don’t have the revenue and we don’t have the readers, it really doesn’t matter what you write.”

It’s true. If a newspaper’s employees don’t care about what its readers want to read, there won’t be much to write about when that paper lays everyone off and stops printing.

Thus a newspaper must make sure that its little journalism is popular with readers. That might mean covering more high school football games (hint: people love photos of high school sporting events and high school sports in general). It might mean that the high school prom is news.

It might mean a lot of things. Ask your readers for better guidance. Covering local news that readets actually care about has been the recipe for success for the Lawrence Journal-World, winner of the NAA’s Digital Edge Award for best overall newspaper site in the under 75,000 circulation category.

No one is debating what Journalism is, but it’s pure hubris to believe that only journalists know what journalism is. Newspapers need readers, and that means covering events that people actually care about.

It’s great to want to be the best at whatever you do.

It’s terrible to think you are the best. Once a person or company believes they have reached the apex of their life or career, they’ll stop innovating. They’ll stop trying to be the best.

There is nowhere further to go, but the best companies and the hardest working individuals never rest on their laurels. Why? Because they never get blinded by their own hubris.

It’s almost impossible to quantify the best in many situations. That, however, doesn’t stop people and companies from drinking their own Kool-Aid.

Don’t drink the Kool-Aid. Always strive to be better. Never think you are the only show in town.

Many newspapers and journalists drank their own Kool-Aid. For a long time they were the only show in town. Want local news? Read the newspaper.

They thought they owned they news. They were the news. That kind of outdated thinking will kill you on the Internet.

And what do you know? A lot of careers and newspapers have been killed. Why?

Because newspapers and journalists stop innovating a long time ago.

For every Mindy McAdams there are 100 professors who don’t have a clue about the Web.

Even if journalism schools radically redesigned their curricula, would most of them be able to deliver a quality education with existing faculty? Yes, tenured professors should be constantly doing research in their field and becoming better teachers, but once a professor gets tenure, they don’t have to adapt to anything new.

Sure existing professors could attend some conferences and seminars, but would that make them qualified to be professors of online journalism? Professors are supposed to be experts, and journalism professors always come in with prior professional experience. A seminar doesn’t give someone professional experience.

It certainly doesn’t give someone the kind of experience that justifies the $45,000 — and rapidly rising — tuition at prestigious schools like Northwestern’s Medill. At many journalism schools the majority of professors are not tenured. But are there even enough qualified professors out there to fill the ranks of classes needed for modern journalism?

And would journalism schools be willing to get rid of the majority of their non-tenured faculty for new professors that had the skills and experience to teach the next generation of journalists how to excel in journalism?