How the fractured media landscape can come together in a ‘public square’ was a dominant theme of a roundtable conversation held last Thursday by the Aspen Institute in Washington D.C.

Along with fewer than 20 varied industry leaders, I heard the presentations of two new white papers from the institute, which are a follow up to the Knight Commission Report on Informing Communities.  This was the seventh in a series of roundtables.

There’s quite a bit that came from the morning session, but I wanted to start by sharing some initial takeaways on the presentions and subsequent conversation.

Norm Ornstein on Creating a New Public Square

• Mid 20th century America created a public square with limited-choice network TV news and widely circulated newspapers. This featured ‘a common set of facts’
• Future public squares may be varied, but there should be largely shared set of ideas.
• This is a reason for partisanship today, a lack of shared perspective
• Keep newspapers alive until business plans arrive — this could be seen through growth in tablet usage

Re-Imagining Journalism: Local News for a Networked World

• If journalism was created today what would it look like?
• $1 billion in federal spending annually on advertising, largely national, but that could be brought locally to grow public affairs on a smaller level

Questions I was left asking and interesting take aways I had:

• The web has put a mirror to ourselves, and the web metrics question our belief in audience interest in our best product.
• Aren’t social networks and other web-based tribes the future of the public square?
• Can the need for heavy broadband infrastructure be someday trumped by advanced wireless technology for access
• Steve Buttry: “We operate the only machine named in the Constitution” meaning newspapers

Print is going to last longer than we might think because we can prove print in a way we cannot prove with digital.

Someone recently mentioned to me that in 10 years, we’ll still be predicting the death of newspapers. I think sitting here, in my office, looking at a copy of the Wall Street Journal that I stuffed into my pocket after finding it on a bench at the 2nd Street station in Old City Philadelphia, I believe that to be true.

Let me say something controversial: newspapers mean something more than news sites. Just like printed photographs mean something more than Facebook pictures.

Digital media still should amaze in their flexibility, utility and reach. But their printed counterparts are also still remarkable for all the reasons their future seem limited: they are inflexible, expensive and in-viral.

For more than their serendipity, when I pick up a newspaper, I so often want to hold on to it because it still feels like the best way to preserve our history: how we see, interpret and understand today in this present. Digital media are so powerful because they are so malleable — we can shape words, correct mistakes, add visual supplement so easily. But when it’s printed — that newspaper, that photograph, that view of the world — what we see cannot be as easily changed.

Understand, truth is very rarely in a newspaper or in a photograph, but what is in them — and what is far more difficult to change — is our version of that truth, and that matters something too.

Our understanding of the world and our trust in it is so tied to having our own piece of it — not sharing it with a cloud — that it’s difficult to give that up. Even someone as young as I am — mid-twenties — understands almost preternaturally the mechanics of print in a way I cannot understand digitizing information. Understanding and trust seem so interlocked.

The reality is that the internet may likely give us a place where all information is accessible and distributable, culled and curated in ways absolutely unimaginable in the history of civilization. That reality does, I believe, make us better equipped to understand, and, with a set of ethics, that means we are more able to hold accountable what was said, what was thought, what was shared in the past, in a much cleaner way.

We don’t need a stack of yellowed newspaper clippings anymore in that world. But won’t we still frame photographs for some time now into the future?

Because while there are so many ways to improve on print, we feel so much more in control of that stack of clippings and that framed photo than we do with them in pixels. So while our senses say we should pull the plug on print promptly, it’ll take a decade or two before we overcome the feelings over which we have less control.

More than a year ago, I handled a half dozen interviews and a couple rewrites on a story for the Inquirer that covered what Philadelphia workplaces will look like in the future. As is sometimes the case, it never found its home in print.

The story’s primary timeliness has been lost, but I think it still has merit. So, with permission from my editor, I share it below, in addition to a slew of extras from the heavy lifting of reporting.

It was meant to be a localized version of a Time magazine cover story that caught my attention.

Below, read the story, see portions of my interviews that didn’t make it into the piece and watch some related video news pieces

*Please note that the facts, figures, quotations and assertions are fact-checked and correct as of June 2009.

THE FUTURE OF THE PHILADELPHIA WORK PLACE

Not that long ago, there was something of a stable existence in retail.

Sheldon Abba

Sheldon Abba worked in a variety of clothing stores, from independent storefronts to big players like Urban Outfitters. He had a marketing and design background and, he thought, a fairly good sense of his future.

And then the bottom fell out.

With the economy on the slide, he was let go from Walnut Street-retailer Stussy in February, and his perception of that future changed.

“When I was in school, I thought I’d get a steady job with a brand and get a regular paycheck,” Abba, 23, said. “When that job evaporated, I started thinking differently. Maybe I could pay bills doing something like it on my own.”

So, with a handful of friends, he launched S. Industries, an ethereal design and retail company that is based wherever Abba and his cohorts are at the moment. He’s finding steady work through word of mouth but will soon take the venture on the Web through an e-commerce site. It’s a far ride from clocking in as a retail day manager.

The U.S. recession has changed lots of plans, like Abba’s. While entrepreneurs, freelancers and telecommuters have long been part of the U.S. workforce, today’s economic climate seems to have put more people in those roles than in recent memory. So much so that some say independent, remote ventures like Abba’s S. Industries are part of a trend for the future of the nation’s workplace.

That trend may fast become a norm in Philadelphia and across the country in the next five years or more, said Thomas Malone, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology management professor and author of the 2004 book, The Future of Work. Those who do stick to cubicle life may find their offices becoming smaller, closer to home, more mobile and, believe it or not, more fun in coming years, other experts say — all thanks to advances in communication technologies and increasingly casual work environments.

“The key message here is that I think we are in the early stages of an increase in human freedom in work, and it just might be as important a change for business as democracy was for government,” Malone said.

Some worry that the expected continued decline in traditional office employees could leave the new worker short on camaraderie and political social skills.

To curb his isolation, though, Abba has launched his venture with friends. They hold their meetings in bedrooms with a computer and a hard drive, listening to music and laughing.

“That’s a different work environment than any work place,” Abba says. “What I’m doing — finding work and making a schedule — is really valuable learning.”

For those who work from home for established companies, there’s another trend in keeping the best of the office: co-working.

For more than four years, Lori Hylan-Cho worked for software companies in California from 2,800 miles away in her Logan Square home near the Philadelphia Art Museum. The software developer and mom, whose hair is not unknown to be dyed purple on occasion, relished the flexibility but lamented the solitude.

“I was going a little nutty,” she said.

So, after making “a New Year’s resolution to get out of the house,” Hylan-Cho rented out space at Independents Hall, a shared office in Old City that rents workplaces to self-employed or other independent workers.

“In the coming years, the place becomes less important than the tools, and managers become more comfortable with distribution,” said Alex Hillman, a freelance Web developer who in 2006 opened Indy Hall with University of the Arts professor Geoff DiMassi. “Companies that want to stay ahead of the curve — if they’re open-minded — will need to explore these options in the traditional worker-employer relationship.”

Hylan-Cho, 40, has worked in software development for 11 years and has watched more and more of her co-workers flee the office.

“Working from home let me put in a load of laundry, be home for packages and sometimes meet the kids for lunch,” she said. She kept in touch with work by way of regular video conferences and instant messaging, connecting with co-workers from California to Texas back to Philadelphia.

That extra freedom kept her loyal, one of the more valuable assets of an employee in the future.

“Businesses are quickly finding that one of the most expensive costs of business is turnover,” said Deanna Geddes, an assistant professor of human resource management at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. So, the Center City office of the future may increasingly be a more inviting place.

Geddes says we might see the rise of the campus workplace for those who, unlike Abba and Hylan-Cho, do stay in the office.

“What successful businesses like Google learned before a lot of others is that people like to hang out, where they can develop friends, and when you have friendships in the workplace, people want to stay,” she said. “The casual campus environment that is more open, with fewer doors and walls, more communal space, games and less restrictive hours, lets people come and go as they please and keeps them invested in the workplace.”

For those who have already left traditional work environments, voluntarily or because of a tightened economy, the recession seems to point work places in a new direction.

“It takes a special kind of person, someone who can separate time and get work done,” Abba said. “That isn’t everyone, but clearly even the old-style offices of the past are going to change.”

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Professor Thomas Malone, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• “We’ll see the economic benefits of very large business, as the same time as the human benefit of very small organizations, the freedom and creativity.”
• “The reason, of course, is a completely new generation of technologies that are reducing the cost of communication to such a low level. A huge number of people can now make sensible decisions for themselves with access to enough information because of the Internet, instead of just following orders.
• “We’ll see more human freedom, more people making more decisions for themselves. We may see more small organizations, where you’re your own boss.”
• A lot of lessons about that future can be taken from the nation’s largest private employer and an online auction behemoth, Malone said. Increasingly, we won’t need or always be able to find a company to employ us.
  “The clerk in Walmart and that seller for eBay represent the difference in what is now and what may come: in how they work, in responsibilities and where and when they have to do them,” Malone said. “Seven hundred thousand people say they make their primary or secondary living on eBay. They are essentially independent store owners with a huge amount of freedom in what they do, what to sell and what prices to set. That’s the future.”
• “Even inside big companies, we’ll see more freedom inside the company, more command and control to coordinate and cultivate. In another meaning of freedom, there will be more choice of when or where they work, with telecommuting for example, we’ll see a decentralization of the workplace. Both of those results are enabled by cheap communication….
• One reason cities grew the way they did was that for many occupations you had to live in a city, near the office to the company you worked for. One of the important trends changed by cheap communication technology is that more and more kinds of work can be done essentially anywhere in the world. What that means, I think, is that people will choose where they live often for reasons other than where their company is because it won’t matter. What that means is the dynamics of cities, i think will change. There are a lot of nice things about living in cities other than just going to work there. So, some people will continue to want to work in cities even though their jobs don’t require them to do so. It’s hard to know what the net impact on a city like Philadelphia will be, but I expect the population of cities may lessen but that the quality of living will go up.
• “The key point is electronic communication is reducing the need to travel to work everyday. You can work at home or near home much of the time. Ten years ago, we used to think that more and more people would become telecommuters. I think that’s not nearly so black and white now. The vast majority of professionals will be telecommuters in the sense that they work some of the time from home or while traveling and surely the professionals who spend all the time working from the office are a minority, but we’ll see a hybrid of office and telecommuting time.
• “If you need an example of a future employee, look at an eBay seller. If those 700,000 people were employees, it would make eBay the second-largest private employer in the country, second only behind Walmart. Of course, they are not employees… That’s all the freedom of any small store owner. It’s on a scale unlike ever before, in any regional or global marketplace. It’s as if an auction company built a retailer — not eBay the company, but eBay the community.
• “In cities, there is a pretty strong division between business and residential neighborhoods. Maybe we’ll see more of a blurring of these distinctions,” Malone, the MIT professor, said. “I think when people don’t have to drive or commute all the way to a downtown of a city, that means they could stay at home. We’ll see more of something I call a neighborhood office building.”It would be a place, Malone said, where telecommuters and freelancers, whose numbers are expected to rise, can work together. It’s a trend called co-working that already has strong roots in Philadelphia.
• ; residential neighborhoods with one or two or more office floors

Professor, Deanna Geddes, human resource management at Temple’s Fox School of Business

• This is a time to play to our strengths as a region. research and biotech, biomedic
• Companies without the sophisticated IT for corporate to retain employees may suffer.
• We might see more choice, allowing younger people to come in at 10 a.m. and work through 8 or stay on to 9.
• Center City could become the place for more campus-orientated workplaces. It’s cheaper to build out of the existing city.
• Taking a mantra from education in 1990s, clicks not bricks. We don’t need all the institutions.
• Work flexibility will be key.
• More and more employees are looking for flexibility. work-life issues and boredom go even further.
• There’s nothing more valuable than a good idea.
• More people want a job that first their lifestyle,  not just someplace to punch a time card.”
• “There will always be a place for corporate headquarters. They may change, get smaller and more casual, but they won’t go away entirely.”
• “There will always be a place for the cubicle jungle,” Geddes, the Temple professor, said. “But we won’t go as much and might not have to travel as far.”

Web designer Alex Hillman, co-founder of Independents Hall

• “What happens when a company is based outside the city, and the employee lives outside the city, but they come to the city to work in a physical space, like a coffee shop or sitting in a park using Wi Fi?” Place starts to breakdown.
• “The risk is low, as it’s a fairly cheap big city. There are a lot of industries and for so long Philly has just been a good place to try new things. It’s in our city’s history.”
• “With some trust for telecommuting or greater freedom and be valuable to the long-term relationship.
• “People react to distractions differently, but ultimately being completely isolated can’t be healthy,” said Hillman. “A combination of factors affect the distribution of the workplace.”
• In 2006, Alex Hillman, a freelance Web developer who caught cabin fever from too many lonely work sessions at home, and Geoff DiMassi, a University of the Arts professor, opened Indy Hall.
• See Technically Philly coverage of Alex Hillman.

Software engineer Lori Hylan-Cho, telecommuter and Indy Hall member

• 
• “Ditching the commute is a big thing. It’s not just that you’re stuck in traffic or on a train, but you’re not with a family. could productive worrk time, but not family time.”
• It was awesome. But it puts a strain on communication. You have to be a very active communicator. You have to make sure you’re around.”
• “I’m used to working with a lot of men, certainly in technical positions,” she said.
• The worst recession in a generation or more has brought on a slew of attention to the future of business and our friendly workplace confines. In the view of some experts, the Web-literate telecommuter is a sign of things to come.
• It’s invaluable for life balance, as you have kids, your job can be more portable giving you a chance to be with your family.”
• “It was a great way to have a job that I love and live where I want to live,” Hylan-Cho, 40, said.
• So, if Hylan-Cho lands another gig that brings her to an office, she might meet with colleagues there for regular meetings, if not traditional full days. Still, she said it’ll be hard to give up the flexibility she’s had for the past few years.
• But, she now no longer telecommutes for that California company. In fact, she says she might look for another chance at the collaboration of a traditional office.
• “I don’t know if it’s the future,” Hylan-Cho said. “But it’s worked well for me.”

Helpful U.S. Census Bureau of Labor Statistics information for Philadelphia employment:

• BLS Mid-Atlantic Information Office
• Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), 2008-09 Edition
• Employment Projections
• Regional Employment and Unemployment News
• Regional Employment Statistical Data
• Pennsylvania County Employment and Wages presser

“So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this – the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.”

While I write here for free and have given a great deal of sweat equity to startups Technically Philly and NEast Philly without much monetary return yet, I’ve taken a fairly firm stand that I won’t write for free and don’t think other freelancers should, which happens to be my biggest beef with the Huffington Post.

But Shirky’s assessment (which came in 2004, I should add) and other conversation about the cost of writing brings up a topic that continues to weigh on my mind.

Already on wringing my hand over the matter, I saw a craigslist posting that, after a laugh, seemed to further my acceptance that we’ll continue to see pay fall for writers, reporters and the like.

what is it with these supposed gigs which either pay close to nothing $6 an ARTICLE ??! !! or wait – $1 a rewrite !!!
why are writers so undervalued ?? or the ‘no pay’. If its so EASY to WRITE — THEN DO IT YOURSELF !!
I SAY WRITERS – IGNORE THESE IDIOTS . [Source]

I have to say I think I agree with what motivated that poster and that might frighten me.

So many tools have been built to find the cheapest source and the growing crush of unemployed journalists and continued graduation of aspiring journalists, not to mention people outside the industry who would take writing on as a hobby, all make for clear reasons to expect the continued devaluation of paid writers.

I don’t yet agree that all of this will evaporate, but it’s clear, I think, that we’ll continue to see the brush cleared out and only the highest level writers will continue to cobble together any kind of paid existence.

Are you going to be in that number?

The 21st century graduates of The Temple News at the 88th anniversary alumni reception: (Back from left) Andrew Thompson, '09; Chris Reber, '08; ; Alex Irwin, '08; Brandon Lausch, '06; Lucas Murray, '05; Christopher Wink, '08; Mike Korostelev, '09 (Second from back row) Sulaiman Abdur-Rahman, '07; Chris Stover, '09; Morgan Zalot, '11; Dave Isaac, '09; Anthony Stipa, '09; Kevin Brosky '10; Kriston Bethel, '10; Tracy Galloway, '10; Unclear (Third from back row) Brian White, '04; Holly Otterbein, '09; Leigh Zaleski, '08; LeAnne Matlach, '09; Jen Reardon, '10; Sherri Hospedales, '10; Stephen Zook, '10; Chelsea Calhoun, '10; Maria Zankey, '10; Brian Dzenis, '12; Shannon McDonald, '09; Sean Blanda, '08; Rachel Playe, '08; Brian James Kirk, '08 (Front Row) Brianna Barry, '08; Melissa Dipento, '08; Ashley Nguyen, '12; Malaika Carpenter, '08; Charmie Snetter, '07; Nadia Stadnycki,'06

You just aren’t doing everything you can.

It’s the seemingly unintentional, passive-aggressive jab that I sometimes get from older or otherwise more established journalists, writers and editors. Most often and in many ways, I’m sure the sentiment is pristine in its accuracy, often abutted by the never-to-be-defended-against “it takes time,” which, of course is always true.

But I can’t help but think what’s happened since, say, 2007 or even later, is something bigger that is changing the value of a lot of once rock solid professional advice for young and otherwise aspiring journalists, and making it awfully hard out there.

Two weeks ago, The Temple News, a college newspaper with ample history, held its semi-annual reunion. The reception pulled 150 or more proud Newsers from 1949 through to current staffers, fairly impressive for an 88-year-old campus mainstay.

It was a fine event held not far from where Temple University began more than 125 years ago, and, while mostly alumni clustered to those from their decade of graduation, there was co-mingling, which is always refreshing to see.

Before the reception, there were tours, mingling in the current newsroom and an alumni panel, of which I am proud to say I was a part.

Of the ten panel members, five had graduated this decade and the other half all had left the Temple News offices before 1981.

That means there quite literally was a generation a gap, at least 20 years between half the panel and, you know what, while the conversation quickly followed that track, the career advice that came later found a divide along more recent lines.

TALKING AND REMEMBERING

After everyone introduced him or herself, we were asked to share memories of our time with The Temple News. It felt natural  to let the older cohort take hold of the conversation, and it seemed my fellow, younger panel members agreed, none of us saying much if anything more than that first introduction.

It became a sharing of stories from the panel members — and then the older folks from the audience of more than 30. Stories from people who were working in or breaking into the industry during a past generation of the industry.

Most young journalists love the old nostalgic talk of hot press/cold press/teletype and all the other once technologies of newspapering. So we, the younger generation, both on the panel and in the audience, of Temple News alumni, listened to them remembering.

Reunions are about remembering, so no one blinked when Mike Sisak, a copy editor on the New York Times’ sports desk and a 1962 Temple News editor-in-chief, called for anyone from his generation in the room to identify him or herself and talk about his or her experiences.

That, quite frankly, is the divide I expected.

The panel members who could perhaps still pass for someone’s child would mostly listen, while those who might more likely be called a parent or more likely still a grandparent would talk about the past. That’s how it’s meant to be.

CAREER ADVICE

With the last 10 minutes of the nearly 90-minute pre-reception event, current Temple News adviser and 1998 graduate John Di Carlo called for questions from the audience.

One of the last and, to me, the most interesting question, came from former TTN News Editor and 2009 graduate LeAnne Matlach.

The bright, competent and hard-working aspiring broadcast journalist asked, as inevitably is the case at these types of events, asked for advice on grabbing that first job in the industry. Saddled with student loans and several hundred applications deep seven months past her graduation with not much to show for it outside a food service job, Matlach is, it seems, awfully frustrated by her lack of success despite, it seems, making a lot of the right decisions.

I almost cringed. Not because the question was unfair and certainly not because it wasn’t the time to do it — the room was full of the bright and excessively successful in an industry she wanted in on — but rather because I expected advice that wouldn’t help and, maybe, hurt her, in my opinion.

Here’s a quick review of some of the advice as I remember it:

1. A 1959 graduate said try spicing up your applications or clips you send in. To get one of his first jobs, he sent in a cartoon.
2. A 1962 graduate said reach out to alumni.
3. A 1968 graduate said not to ignore Web products and asked, with a laugh from the crowd, if NEast Philly founder and 2009 graduate Shannon McDonald or I were hiring.
4. A ~1970s graduate said to try public relations or other fields before finding a journalism gig.
5. A 1991 graduate said ‘be annoying.’ He “graduated in a tough economy too,” but he got a position by persistently approaching the editor at a publication for which he wanted to work.
6. A 2004 graduate said apply to smaller markets.
7. A 2005 graduate says freelance, freelance, freelance.

Mike Sisak, Phil Jasner, Shannon McDonald and I on the alumni panel.

You see, while the broad conversation was split along traditional generational lines, the conversation about career advice appears here to be affected more by the great big newspaper collapse that didn’t happen in its most popularly-recognized form until after 2006.

I think every since piece of advice above was absolutely viable even five years ago. I think they’ve all become more complicated since the quickened pace of newspaper decline, combined with a historic stall in advertising, the worst recession since before World War II  and a complete rethink of the industry.

Here are my concerns:

1. This might translate today to a solid multimedia presence, something Matlach is trying, though perhaps she could do more. She is building a bit of a presence on Twitter and has her reel on Youtube, seen above, which dominates a Google search of her name. The fact remains that journalism jobs have been cut at a historic rate over the past three years, so entry level jobs are now being absorbed by people with years more experience. The newspaper bubble is popping and no cartoon is gonna overcome that.
2. Reaching out to alumni is always valuable, and I saw Matlach wisely speaking to this alumnus after the reception. But in a room of 50 or more successful journalists at newspapers and news outfits of big and small acclaim, only one could even begin to speak honestly of any freelance opportunities for someone starting out — Barry Levine, the executive editor of the National Enquirer and a 1981 graduate.
3. The growth of Web news is, of course, a real one and likely we’ll see a huge hyperlocal movement in the next few years. I’m also a passionate believer that the most successful of these will be for-profit entities, but this is a surprisingly nascent movement. Without the real help of alumni in No. 2, a recent graduate would have to have a lot of luck to get on board with a profitable online news arm. Knowledge of this is simply way ahead of the actual businesses.
4. See No. 1. With so many unemployed people generally, and particular in the media industry, I think established journalists are underestimating how difficult it is to find that writing-related, but not-quite-journalism job. Still, the point should be taken, but keep these struggles in mind.
5. It’s frustrating for recent graduates to hear the folks from the early 1980s and 1990s talk about the tough economies they graduated into. Please understand that this is a new beast. Not only is unemployment for 20-somethings the highest since records were first taken in the 1940s, but when we’re talking the news industry, there is simply no generation of journalism graduates who have ever faced the entry-level obstacles that today’s graduates do. That 1991 graduate who came out in a “tough economy, too” came out to a newspaper industry that was still growing in some ways — the historic peak for the number of newspapers with at least 250k readers didn’t come until 1993. All that said, persistence sure is virtue, but the jobs, even those internships, simply aren’t there.
6. Sure, entry-level folks need to look outside Philadelphia if they are still going to try to play the newspaper/media climbing game, but, say it with me now, more than 30,000 newspaper jobs have been lost in the past two years. Matlach told the audience that she had applied for positions in Guam, and she’s also applied for gigs in North Dakota. She’s trying.
7. I agree with the sentiment of freelancing and I’m doing it myself, but having spoken after the panel to the alumnae who made this suggestion, I know there is a misunderstanding about how available that is for recent graduates who need money. You’re not supposed to freelance when you’re just starting out, when there’s a recession nor when the news industry is in a period of massive readjustment. They’re all happening now, so it’s harder than ever for young freelancers. I believe that, particularly because while the number of outlets for which to write has jumped, the number of paid opportunities has not.

Reality TV star Danny Bonaduce attended the reception that followed the panel to speak about his aunt Jackie Steck, who was a Temple journalism professor. I'm standing in the back left of this photo in the handsome green argyle sweater.

No one, particularly no one on a fancy alumni panel celebrating a college newspaper with a proud tradition, wants to give a bleak response or offer no real help. So you give the advice you’ve been given. You say things that have worked, but that doesn’t mean they’ll work now.

This is what I would have told Matlach, though she already knows my thoughts here.

1. Ride out this recession. Get whatever job you can now to pay your bills because the recession is lessening, some advertising money will flow again, business models will be rehashed, news orgs and other big companies will feel less of a pinch on their legacy debt, unemployment will reduce in the coming years and the like.
2. While you’re doing that, do three things so as not to waste your time: Do freelance. This is a lot more difficult than I think many established journalists want to believe, but you do have to keep your name out there. It won’t pay your bills like it has for others for reasons: there are more freelancers now because of unemployment; there are smaller budgets for it and you’re young so you’re least important, established and networked. Understand the pros and cons.
3. Do create the strongest multimedia presence you can. I am hardly a Web developer, but I’ve continually focused on trying to develop my ability to own Web news, writing and reporting and, though Matlach is strong in these areas, I know she, like most others out there, can learn plenty more. When this thing turns around, you’d be a fool to not be the strongest out the gate.
4. And, I think most important, start creating your own job. No one is entirely certain how long it will take for employment numbers to return to whatever was once normal. Even when they do, no one is entirely sure what the media landscape will look like. Hell, maybe the world isn’t ending, but this may be a very dramatic pardigm shift in the world of news. Find a niche and start trying to create a job, a business and a life around news and reporting and journalism if that’s really what you want. Learn to write a business plan.

A friend of mine, who is a bright young multimedia journalist by any standard, a fellow 2008 Temple News alumnus and even-keeled in his temperament, recently expressed, perhaps only partially in jest, his concern that he might be unable to stop from shouting down the next established journalist who tried to lay the claim that things were harder when he was starting.

It’s not that not-yet established journalists don’t respect their more accomplished peers. We do. But for every old timers story about how they didn’t have the Internet and other Web-based technologies and tools, it’s difficult to not hear any sympathy for how difficult it is right now.

That’s going to change in coming years. But graduates from, say 2006 or 2007, particularly those in journalism fields, through to the next couple graduating classes have it damn tough, and it’d be nice for some of that to be respected and understood, instead of criticized.

Click to enlarge.

Americans aged 24 or younger could be part of a “lost generation,” says a new cover story from Business Week.

For people just starting their careers, the damage may be deep and long-lasting, potentially creating a kind of “lost generation.” Studies suggest that an extended period of youthful joblessness can significantly depress lifetime income as people get stuck in jobs that are beneath their capabilities, or come to be seen by employers as damaged goods.

It’s the latest stylish trend piece at a time when general stories on an economy that might not return for two or three years are already old hat. A lot of the numbers are fuzzy and the effect may be questionable, but there’s no questioning that it’s daunting for many 20-somethings.

We graduated and walked into perhaps the worst economy since before our grandparents were our age. A few more distinctions this author has taken on has made those statistics seem even more frightening, but outside of the occasional sobbing, I try to remind myself that there’s no better time or place in the world than where I am now.

First, how about five reasons why I should be professionally scared:

• More than half of Americans under the age of 24 are unemployed
  “The unemployment rate for young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent — a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept… During previous recessions, in the early ’80s, early ’90s and after Sept. 11, 2001, unemployment among 16-to-24 year olds never went above 50 percent.”
• “The unemployment rate for men is running 2.7 percentage points higher than for women”
  A “just unprecedented” spread, according to economist Mark Perry at the University of Michigan-Flint.”
• Philadelphia has one of the highest national unemployment rates for 20-somethings
  “While national unemployment is at 9.4 percent, people ages 20 to 29 face jobless rates of 12.7 percent nationally and 14 percent in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, including South Jersey, according to figures compiled by Mark Price of the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg.”
• Nearly 30,000 newspaper jobs have been cut since the beginning of 2008
  Yup, while I am working on building hyperlocal news sites and my own small business, I am freelancing mostly for newspapers and have first come into the tragically dysfunctional journalism business at the most dramatic shift in its more than two-centuries old history.
• Nearly one-third of employees with 401ks are saving even less than they did six months ago
  I was raised a saver and did so quite obsessively throughout my childhood, well into college. I always had a job and rarely made any unnecessary purchases, so I left college in May 2008 with a fine nest egg for a middle-class college graduate. But after backpacking Europe and more than a year under performing in the earning category, those liquid assets have been… mostly liquidated. That leaves me vulnerable in a small way like millions of Americans deal with everyday and limits a lot of good behavior.

I am a (1) male (2) 20-something in the (3) Philadelphia (4) news industry with a (5) decimated bank account.

That’s a lot (5) stacked against any young professional, but there’s balance to be had.

I am blessed with great privilege and a great country of opportunity. I have been put in a time and a place in which I can experiment quite easily with new media models, relatively risk free. I have been forced into a state of entrepreneurship that I probably never would have executed otherwise. I am a thousand-times stronger manager and developer than ever before.

Lots of people are saying just these same things for the news industry specifically and shouting really loudly about what to do.

If I have to bus a few tables, make a few photocopies, talk a bit about social networking now for the opportunity to build a business, make my own schedule and choose what I want to do, can there be any hesitation about this time being a great opportunity?

If what I’m doing now is “sacrificing,” I’ll happily do that to build what I want to build. ….Now, if this whole ship is going down, well, then, damn.

At least when you fail, it helps knowing your entire generation is trying to figure this out.

With an Oct. 15 deadline looming, I’ve had my hand in two submissions requesting funds from the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge program.

One I wrote in conjunction with Shannon McDonald, requesting $40,000 to launch a Neighborhood Correspondents program for NEast Philly, a hyperlocal news site for Northeast Philadelphia.

The second was a proposal from the three of us behind Technically Philly, seeking $250,000 to help establish a sales, marketing and business services company to help grow and unite niche news sites in Philadelphia.

Of course, we were knocked from contention for a $10,000 Knight-Batten grant by the New York Times, but we think we have a good pitch on another day. Who knows what could happen?

Give both a look, comment, rate and spread the word. We won’t find out until November if we’re in the running and not until 2010 if we’d get any money. Still, a kid can dream, right?

See briefs of the two pitches below.

NEast Neighborhood Correspondents: create a sustainable network of professionally trained citizen journalists to cover their own neighborhood civic meetings and local events. ($40,000)

The details: We intend to rent a small, centrally located office that will serve as an open newsroom for residents and our small staff. We’ll choose a resident from each neighborhood to receive basic journalism training, professional support, access to multimedia equipment and a small payment of roughly $15 per post, if they share an update from their neighborhood at least once a week. They will include coverage of monthly civic meetings, but also updates on community events and interviews with other residents. Their coverage will then be curated by our professionally trained editor, whose time will be freer to track trends and write larger, more in-depth pieces when necessary.

Read full proposal here.

The staff blog of Philadelphia CityPaper caught wind of this.

Newsadelphia: a business, sales and marketing service for Philadelphia hyperlocal news startups ($250,000)

The details: Newsadelphia is an administrative, sales and marketing hub for a confederation of hyperlocal and otherwise targeted online-only news sites within the city of Philadelphia. By offering a variety of services for Web-based organizations like sales, IT support, event planning and marketing to decentralized editorial products, we will empower these sites to focus on their individualized editorial visions while creating sustainable, profitable media businesses. After hiring a lead sales agent and business manager, and compensating other journalists to launch similarly targeted sites built on solid business plans, we project a hub of individualized niche sites will be profitable and able to collectively afford the sales and administrative staff independently.

Read full proposal here.

Somethat that wasn’t appropriate to put in the final product but I loved: We are not newspaper refugees seeking grant money to create another foundation-dependent nonprofit news site, but rather journalism entrepreneurs who have already built a successful online-only news product and want the funding to see it connected to a variety of other hyperlocal and Philadelphia-specific verticals to begin to completely cover an important, historic city that is at risk of losing its best news-gathering organizations due to contraction and debt.

So does either have a host? Any ways we can improve? Anything else we should looking at to make these better before next week’s deadline?

Image by Minh Uong/The New York Times.

Hyperlocal news is as much as a buzz phrase for those in news media today as anything else — yes, even social media.

But as these things happen, no real definition seems to hit at what we’re talking about, and I was surprised to not be able to easily find someone who tried to give one.

So, expecting some comments to show where I missed one or simply critiquing my own, I humbly submit one, if only for my own understanding.

• hyperlocal news (n): information gathering about a geographically-specific community that is part or was once part of a broader coverage area or focus.

So here’s what I mean by that. The hyperlocal movement is encapsulating some pretty broad, disparate agendas, from (1) citizen journalists covering their neighborhoods or towns of just a few thousand people or even fewer through to (2) media entrepreneurs who are trying to create news-gathering organizations covering as many as a few hundred thousand people in a specific geographic place — or, you know, data assembled by a computer.

What I think they have in common is the fracturing from or refocusing of an existing coverage area. Maybe a newspaper is struggling to report on a portion of its long-held coverage area with a smaller staff or one has entirely given up a now too-large readership base as too few of them are paying for that news.

In each case, someone is seeing a need for more news and finding value in making in narrower. Whether that blog or news site is covering a part of a city that isn’t getting the same coverage from the big daily newspaper or a small town that doesn’t get much attention from a regional news source, it doesn’t really matter, what is meaningful to me is that someone narrowed a coverage area to create a new product with a more specified audience.

While there’s value in thinking of this coverage as being simply that which is narrow in focus to be very often uninteresting for anyone unaffiliated to the specific community, it doesn’t differentiate enough from small town newspapers. That’s local news. Hyperlocal is the further fracture of even local news.

I’ll add that I believe hyperlocal is exclusively the domain of geography. While a site covering knitters in Philadelphia certainly fractures it audience, it doesn’t fracture it by geography. Now, a blog handling community events following knitters in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of northwest Philadelphia would, in my opinion, count, if only because of the neighborhood divide and not the knitting.

I don’t think profit or motivation much matters just yet at this stage of the form’s development. The citizen journalist blogging about his neighborhood to the professional media entrepreneur who is building a business around an underserved rural county can be working in the hyperlocal field by my sight.

Now, the argument can be made that anything is fracturing broader coverage. Domestic news is more focused than international news. Citywide news is smaller than the national wire. It simply becomes a question of intentions. If it’s a Web product that is recreating a printed or other news source, then I don’t think it’s really at its heart hyperlocal.

If you’re narrowing the focus to improve upon other coverage, then hyperlocal we have.

-30-

So  — in fewer words, I hope — what is your definition of hyperlocal news? Where are some other good definitions

Image courtesy of N.Y Times

Editors have been cut. I assume there are more young journalists freelancing and those with staff jobs can’t be getting the same attention. College journalism professors are almost all naturally inclined to a generation no longer here.

Who the hell is teaching the next generation of journalists?

No one knows what it’s store. Some young journalists are offering to work for a pittance – and others are saying that’s bad for journalism.

After my contributing to a business-news blog was cut, my editor said something to me. When he was a young reporter, perhaps at my skill and experience level, he entered got an entry level job with the Wall Street Journal – which had plenty more openings in the 1970s. He made plenty of mistakes, but at that time, newspapers were over-edited. My editor said he had three, four, five editors going through his copy.

That also meant he had a haggard-old newshound teaching him the ropes. Giving him the rules, working his copy, pushing him to go further, offering my editor the time and energy to pursue coverage that might not end up worth it in the end.

Of course that isn’t happening today. Something has to be lost today. I am not being vetted in the same way a journalist of my age and interest would be in a newspaper era now gone. All that stuff we want newspapers to still do in the future may be done by less experienced or challenged or learned caliber.

I suspect editors today are much more burdened and time consumed than their predecessors, but they might not even realize it. Because they don’t have the time or the resources, they likely don’t even know they aren’t passing those same gifts of knowledge and inspiration that they were given by their editors of the past.

As I wrote in an essay for the Columbia Journalism Review last month:

As long as the current generation is here to pass the search of justice onto its successor, the rest is just details we’ll sweat over for the next few years. [Source]

Rather than revenue model, though, my real concerns involve talent. With frighteningly bad pay some aspiring journalists are fleeing the field. Many of the young reporters who are now freelancing – I suppose myself included – aren’t be cultivated or directed in the same way they were even just five years ago.

So who will be left when the revenue model gets figured out for news media? What will that next generation look like? Will it be smaller but stronger, or duller and, sadly, fuller with only those wealthy enough to self-fund or parentally-fund their newspaper or magazine idoloatry?

Photo from Europa.eu.

The Philly.com icon that welcomes you to their headquarters on the 35th floor of 1601 Market Street in Center City Philadelphia, as seen on Jan. 8, 2009.

I owe Philly.com an apology.

I got heavy traffic on a recent post of mine in which I complimented the video product  (particularly Philadelphia Business Today) but regarded it as incomplete in many ways. I haven’t shifted much on my analysis, but I have learned I put the wrong address on the post. Find out where it should have gone below, and what every newspaper – or company, or organization, or individual – can learn from it about branding.

Philadelphia Business Today is not a product of the Inquirer… exactly. I know, Inqy business columnist Mike Armstrong is the lead host. Of course, it’s not a Daily News product. It’s a Philly.com product.

Do you know the difference? This is the most powerful, storied media organization in the fourth largest media market in the country, so if you live near Philadelphia and you don’t, they have a problem. If you aren’t from here, you should pay attention, too.

On Thursday, I got the extreme pleasure and privilege to nag and ask questions of two important fellas in this newspaper-digitization revolution we have on our hands: Yoni Greenbaum and Bob McGovern, executive producer and managing producer of Philly.com respectively.

I always had a vague sense that Philly.com was a different animal than the two newspapers whose content is hosted there. But it’s more.

They are full-throttle three different companies who just happen to be owned by the same company – Philadelphia Media Holdings. These different companies poach and they pilfer and share, for sure, but different companies they be.

So, get it straight. the Inquirer is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the country, the region’s paper of record with 18 Pulitzers and a reputation as a once-was-truly-Great. The Daily News is the city’s 83-year-old tabloid known for its headlines, sports and city coverage. Philly.com is PMH’s future, a “portal” for Philadelphia, as Greenbaum said it. It has a content agreement with the two papers but creates its own multimedia content because the newspapers aren’t doing enough of it and has its own devoted advertising department, all in its own headquarters in skyscraper row along Market St.

That means my compliments for the innovative newspaper video I credited to the Inquirer was misplaced. While Armstrong, an Inqy columnist, is being leveraged, its produced by Philly.com.

While it doesn’t change that I like the product – and, to be fair the multimedia that is being produced by the Daily News – it also doesn’t change my criticisms.

During my time at Philly.com, Managing Producer Bob McGovern told me most readers don’t care about who creates the content. Of course he is absolutely right. Maybe – just maybe – one out of ten redaers cares, only those most loyal to either the Inquirer or Daily News brand. The trouble, I think, is that that number can only be dwindling.

Look, Yoni Greenbaum knows what he is doing, so do his bosses. He claims Philly.com is profitable, and not by a slim margin. We already pretty much guessed the Web site was becoming the workhorse for PMH – which owns other properties, including the Northeast Times.

But Philly.com, and, I am willing to guess, PMH CEO Brian Tierney, aren’t as concerned about the longterm brands of the Inqy and the DN. To be fair, they don’t have to be. They may be doing just fine – or near to it – in the business that many people say they should be, online content creation and advertising dissemination business, not the newspaper business.

But that can’t be the only solution, can it?

Let’s peer into the future of possibilities. The three players could split and play the online game on their own, or the more like-minded newspapers could merge and split with Philly.com. Unless some newspaper ideologue wants to swoop in and buy two financially-struggling newspapers at an inflated price (to cover the costs PMH took on) neither will happen. What’s a lot more likely is the three completely merging.

And the only one of the three really planning for the future is Philly.com. So, it figures that’s the brand name that will stand – however strange that seems.

What’s a possible alternative? Could the Inquirer survive on brand monetization and take on its own Web venture? There doesn’t appear to be any signs of that. I get the feeling that Chris Krewson, the Inquirer’s executive online editor, is overwhelmed with the little fights to be leading revolution. As I’ve said, he seems to get it, but I don’t know how well-supported he really is. The evergreen content – interactive flash design, maps, in-site RSS collections, etc. – that is to the future what 70-inch investigative stories were in the past are nonexistent. If the New York Times can’t get enough genuine clicks to support itself online, the thought of the Inquirer doing it on its own is, sadly, laughable.

After fighting the threat of technology for generations, the Internet has shook newspapers in a way we’ve never seen before. The newspaper bubble, I say often, is bursting. Newspapers need branded personalities in the way cable news has scored with the likes of Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly. They need to convince online advertising is worthwhile – best done with innovation that doesn’t appear likely in that environment.

So, of course, PMH and Tierney rightly and sensibly see Philly.com as their future. It isn’t innovation. It isn’t bold. It just appears to be the only reality.

Because conversely, Philly.com is boasting five million unique visitors per month, Greenbaum said. That’s perhaps a sixth of the Wall Street Journal and a fourth of the New York Times. Considering the Inquirer was absolutely on par editorially with any paper in the world in the 1970s, it’s hard to say, but that’s probably not a bad proportion, to be a fourth of a newspaper that is likely more than four times the size, cost and output. (Some very real criticism of using unique visitors as a metric has surfaced, but to compare similar entities, we can assume the flaws in the totals are comparable too.)

It isn’t what I’d like to see. I suppose fortunately, this is all generally seen to be a slow death – though some wonder about faster versions. There will be at bare minimum a sunday Inquirer for a decade in some form, I’d think, if only out of nostalgia and pride – I should hope. But what then? What does Philly.com need with an old brand that has now developed a grumpy, failing connotation? I would think the plan is for Philly.com to usurp the Inquirer’s national recognition (however now diminished), the urban regard for the Daily News, all with developing a something-else-ness. Their  fresh design from May,  seemed to tell that tale.

But, gosh, could the Inquirer really be put to bed?

The historic white Inquirer building, longtime headquarters of the Philadelphia Inquirer, as seen from the headquarters of Philly.com