PenPoints newsletter
PenPoints newsletter
Convention Highlights
Good journalism still matters…whether online or in print
By Suzanne Hanney, IWPA President
This year’s National Federation of Press Women convention in Richmond, Virginia took full advantage of its historic location, close to the nation’s capital. Between September 20 and 22, attendees heard from national political correspondents and presidential campaign personnel. And in honor of nearby Jamestown’s 400th anniversary, “Queen Elizabeth I” visited the kickoff reception hosted by Dominion energy company at its headquarters on the James River.
Suzanne Hanney |
As at previous NFPW conventions, bloggers and the internet’s effect on print journalism continued to be an issue of major interest. Both Mitch Gelman of CNN.com and John Harris of The Politico and politico.com embrace the change although they started in print. Gelman won a Pulitzer at Newsday and worked for Time and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Harris worked for the Washington Post. Old-line journalism had become too passive, stuck in “a 1975, newspaper-of-record mode,” Harris said. In this entrepreneurial age, readers don’t wait for newspapers to set their agenda. They surf the ’Net until they find what they are looking for. “To me the overwhelming truth was that stories that really reflected journalistic insight tended to be most emailed,” Harris said. Tracking them was “a quantitative way of knowing whether we were succeeding or not.” What Harris termed the “austere voice of God authority” doesn’t work any more. Instead, readers seek a more conversational style—like the stories reporters share among themselves over a beer. |
I had graphic proof of this the evening I returned from the convention when I met a Cook County board member at a school reunion. Since there was no one else from our class, we sat with the nuns and talked about the deficit budget, about election contenders and the people who confessed under police torture.
I couldn’t believe he said it: “They put electric shocks on their privates and forced them to confess to crimes they didn’t do, for which they served time in prison.” But, the nuns were on the edge of their seats.
Online journalism has not changed the need to master the “who, what, when, where and why,” Gelman added. “The real revolution is in the distribution, not in the reporting.” The shift is akin to switching from typewriters to computers, from the composing room to the desktop.
And while bloggers may not be trained journalists, their perceptions are still reality to people on a political campaign, Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder said at a luncheon. The first African-American to be elected governor (in 1990) Wilder briefly ran for president in 1992.
Mo Elleithee, senior spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, agreed. Election campaigns court bloggers because media also follow them, as when they say, “‘Hillary has a problem on the left,’ ” Elleithee said. “With bloggers, that loud, confrontational voice is the one that is the one that gets noticed, so it’s important for us to communicate with that loud voice.”
When the Clinton campaign chooses to whom it will send its message, it picks those not known to be hostile, with a national audience, he said. Still, it also put a big effort into the recent Yearly Kos bloggers convention in Chicago, because to do otherwise would have been a snub of her biggest critics.
What about covering the issues? People say that’s what they want to read, but it’s hard to make interesting beyond bullet points, said Marsha D. Mercer, Washington bureau chief of Media General News Service, co-panelist with Elleithee.
They agreed with Harris and Gelman that conventional media no longer have the power to “filter” news. Candidates now begin their campaigns on the internet and post their platforms.
“Now we can have that dialog directly; we may not reach as many as the nightly news,” Elleithee said, “but we will reach the ones who care about that issue,” Mercer added.
Other convention highlights for me:
• Ken Woodley, editor of the Farmville [Va.] Herald, who said, “you’re only smalltime if you choose to be” in relation to a state-funded education reparations bill; some Virginia schools closed down 50 years ago rather than submit to integration.
• Mary Burton and Ken Dyja, who use journalistic fact and detail in “Making History Come Alive.” Burton is a Harlequin romance writer and Dyja has written about Civil War-era baseball. They tell the story through today’s emotions but the historic setting makes it pop, Burton said.
• The “bold women of NFPW” inspirational moments written by our own Mary Ellen Kearns and my own time as Communicator of Achievement. Thank you all.
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IN THIS ISSUE:
November, 2007 PenPoints Page 1
Good Journalism Still Matters Page 2
Publishing-savvy Author Page 3
IWPA Makes Its Mark Page 4
Bringing Illinois Authors Together Page 6
IWPA Programs/Members News Page 8
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