The Media Bailout

The future of the newspaper and journalism continues to get darker and darker, especially with the bankruptcy of Affiliated Media, Inc. The debt ranges from $500 million to $1 billion. Affiliated Media, Inc. is the holding company of the second-largest newspaper publisher, the MediaNews Group. With that being said could newspapers be in even more trouble than before?

I believe that newspapers and journalism are both in some serious trouble. With a media company so large getting into this kind of trouble it really makes one think, "Is it reliable?" The best way to explain what I mean is to compare this to what happened to this nation's banks. People trusted banks, and put all of their savings into them. Then, what happened those banks needed a government bailout to survive. The same this is pretty much happening all over again but with media companies. How ironic is it, though, that now the banks are bailing Affiliated Media, Inc. out?

For 80 percent of ownership of Affiliated Media lenders, headed by the Bank of America, will take on $930 million of the debt. PRNewswire has an official Affiliated Media news release of this plan. To sum it up: by swapping the $930 million in debt for 80 percent of ownership Affiliated Media is able to restructure and fix its problems. The good news is that it is only Affiliated Media the holding company that will undergo restructuring. The newspapers and everyone working for them will come out unscathed. Now for the bad news, Chairman and CEO, William Dean Singleton, and President, Joseph J. Lodovic IV will not be going anywhere.

Does it make sense, to anybody, to let the men who were in charge and watched this debt accumulate, stay in charge?

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Entrepreneurial Skills Vital

When you think of a journalist, you may typically think of a stereotype created by the movies: a man wearing a long, tan trench coat carrying a notepad in his hand, conveniently running into breaking news around every corner. In today's world, though, this couldn't be farther from the truth. The world of journalism as we know it is changing and so are the skills a journalists needs to possess.

On Friday, January 8th, 2010, CUNY, City University of New York, hosted a conference call for more than two dozen educators around the world. These people may not agree on everything, but they do share one similar goal: to teach entrepreneurial skills to college students who want to become journalists. Not only is it important to have these skills to simply understand the importance of the economics of news, but to better your communication and people skills, which are of high importance as a journalist.

At Arizona State University they are now requiring journalism majors to take entrepreneurship courses to graduate. ASU feels that this will emphasize the importance of journalists possessing entrepreneurship skills that will teach them how to talk with people in other departments, which will then carry over to the work world.

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No Excuses For Mistakes

Writers and journalists constantly battle with mistakes and typos. Locating and correcting these mistakes can take time and to remain efficient writers depend heavily on sometimes inadequate or unreliable methods of locating and correcting mistakes. However, recent technological developments are allowing mistakes to be corrected with greater efficiency and accuracy. An article by Craig Silverman published today in the Columbia Journalism Review introduces and reviews three new applications that are being developed and used to ensure readers the highest quality of writing possible, free from mistakes and typos.

An innovative new application by gooseGrade, soon to be Editz.com, allows writers and readers to work together to fix errors found in online content. By an administrator applying the gooseGrade application to a website, a reader can identify errors in a three step process: first by highlighting the error, second by identifying the type (spelling, punctuation), and third by correcting the error in a text box. The administrator can then correct the error based on the request. Currently available for any website or blog, this technology offers a huge benefit for major news organizations, who are plagued by numerous errors and typos in their online content, and often cannot find the time or manpower to review and correct the content.

Another technology currently being developed brings a social networking aspect to the proofreading process. Called Bite-Size Edits, this website is made up of writers who've created an account and who collectively edit the content uploaded to the site. When a writer uploads the content, the website breaks it down into "bite-sized" pieces and sends it to other users, guaranteeing that each piece of text gets reviewed by two other users. While its creators understand that this does not replace a thorough, final proofreading of a document, they advocate that it offers a fast way to be proofread and could be an effective tool in the editing process.

These new applications certainly have the possibility to ease a portion of the burden from writers and journalists, and could allow news organizations to produce online content of a higher quality. I agree that journalists should become familiar with these new applications, however, we can never lose the importance of old-fashioned proofreading. If anything, these new technologies simply hold us to a higher standard of excellence within our writing, in which several steps of proofreading and revising will be required.

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