paulconley: Students, teachers and visionaries

Seasonal food for thought from media consultant Paul Conley -- highly recommended to seniors writing their resumes... and to younger students thinking about taking my new online journalism class in the fall:

"Last week I visited Northwest Missouri State's new media program... So I've been giving a lot of thought of late to the next generation of journalists. And much of what I've been thinking hasn't been positive.

"Perhaps the strangest thing I've run into is what I've come to think of as the silo student. Kids keep handing me resumes that look like they were written 20 years ago. They mention the student newspaper, the yearbook and the college literary magazine. But they don't mention Web sites, blogs, email newsletters, podcasts, html skills, citizen journalism projects, video, etc.

"And when I ask the students about their online experience, I get these weird responses. Lots of them tell me 'I only want to work for a newspaper.' Lots of them say things like 'I'm going to be a writer, not anything else.' Some seem genuinely perplexed and ask me if I think 'most newspapers have Web sites?' or if 'reporters need to do things on the Web?'"

New media lessons from magazines - Editors Weblog: "It's not just newspapers and television. Magazines are also fighting to adapt to new media. If they haven't already, newspapers could learn from several developments that took place over the past week in the industry of their smaller cousins, some of which could be used to attract young readers."

After you've followed that link, here's the quiz -- name the magazine publishing company that is:
1. Cutting back magazine jobs.
2. Increasing "new media jobs" (but not by as much as the print-side cuts), and -- perhaps just for irony --
3. Launching a website "aimed at office workers looking to waste time."

Presumably people from category #1 are not part of the intended audience for publication #3.

Murdoch speech at Stationers Hall - Times Online: Fox boss says "great content" will preserve news organizations

"What happens to print journalism in an age where consumers are increasingly being offered on-demand, interactive, news, entertainment, sport and classifieds via broadband on their computer screens, TV screens, mobile phones and handsets?

"The answer is that great journalism will always attract readers. The words, pictures and graphics that are the stuff of journalism have to be brilliantly packaged; they must feed the mind and move the heart.

"And, crucially, newspapers must give readers a choice of accessing their journalism in the pages of the paper or on websites such as Times Online or - and this is important - on any platform that appeals to them, mobile phones, hand-held devices, ipods, whatever. As I have said newspapers may become news-sites. As long as news organisations create must-read, must-have content, and deliver it in the medium that suits the reader, they will endure.

"Great content always has been, and I think always will be, king of the media castle."

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Coporation media empire, gave this address on the future of the newspaper industry last month to a London organization with an impressive name: the Worshipful Company of Stationers And Newspaper Makers. (Thanks, Hannah)