In the interest of editorializing, below is the first column I ever wrote for The Lantern, back in 2007. I got more response from this column than any others in my time there. (Well, except for my column about The Dude. That one was pretty popular.)

Practice makes imperfect
Originally published in the April 16, 2007 edition of The Lantern. It is posted here unedited.

I guess you can call me a gatekeeper.

You see, since starting a new position as New Media Editor for The Lantern, I’ve come to enjoy certain aspects of my job more than others.

When I sit down each morning to sift through the list of new comments left on thelantern.com, those left by University of Florida students still proclaiming their superiority in everything from football to physics brighten my day more than, say, producing a podcast. And creating a photo slideshow doesn’t hold a candle to reading Penelope hate mail.

Indeed, the content-control aspect of my job allows me to keep a finger on the pulse of our readers’ thoughts.

So, when I read comments that accuse The Lantern of “shoddy reporting,” “irresponsible editing” and, as one reader bluntly puts it, “striving to new lows in the field of ‘journalism,’” of course my gut reaction is: what are we doing wrong?

Are we really practicing irresponsible journalism? Are our writers and editors simply not making the grade? What’s the deal?

These thoughts kept recurring during the past few weeks. But, I thought, when someone criticizes your work you take it to the heart. So, I labeled them natural and let them slide.

Some time last week, while approving comments left on the Web site, I noticed a common insult included anonymously in responses to three different stories. It accused Lantern writers of being “wannabe journalists.”

Again the initial gut reaction was there, but this time it was different. This time the insult seemed empty.

The last time I checked, every student at Ohio State University is a wannabe. That is, after all, why we’re here. We all want to be something.

So, each time an English student misuses hyperbole, is he a wannabe wordsmith? Sure. Each time a physics student confuses String Theory for particle science, is she a wannabe Einstein? Absolutely. And you’d be correct to assume that each misidentified colloid is the product of a wannabe chemist.

The point is, attacking a student newspaper for lacking professionalism is not only a bit near-sighted, it is overlooking the principle reason for having a student newspaper in the first place.

Sure, as journalists it’s our goal to accurately and fairly report the news of the OSU campus. But ask any student enrolled in communication 423 (which is, by the way, where 90 percent of The Lantern’s writers come from) why they want to write for the student newspaper, and I guarantee his first response isn’t: “to serve the greater good of the university.”

It’s practice, people. Pure and simple. It’s the only chance we journalists have to hone our craft before taking a professional position in the field.

Typically, the argument most readers make toward The Lantern’s supposed lack of professionalism revolves around the idea that this paper is the official newspaper of OSU, and when we print certain stories or opinions it reflects poorly on the university. In response to the column “The Naked Truth,” one reader said, “The newspaper that purports to be the voice of OSU students has to have better ways to spill ink than this.”

Indeed, directly below the flag on our front page is the phrase: “The student voice of the Ohio State University.” This line is often misinterpreted. Essentially, the only ties the paper has with OSU is that our writers are students. Hence – student voice. One writer’s opinion is simply that and should not be interpreted otherwise.

I’m not condemning the idea of reader responses, or even negative criticism for that matter. I openly welcome them. It’s the notion that The Lantern should be held to the same light as a professional newspaper that I’m aiming to dissolve.

There’s a sign tacked to the wall directly above my desk in the newsroom that best sympathizes with my thoughts. It reads: “Lawyers hang their mistakes. Doctors bury theirs. Journalists print theirs on the front page.”

Unfortunately, this wannabe journalist’s op-ed won’t run on the front page. Maybe that’s the mistake.

As the week ended, out-of-town members departed for home. On Saturday on the way to North Carolina, the car of Walter’s daughter Joyce caught on fire. The front end of the car was destroyed. Luckily Joyce, her daughter and infant granddaughter were not injured, but spent two hours in 105 degree weather waiting for Walter to return to rescue them.

Classic.

Re-reading it now, it doesn’t quite have the same effect out of context. This was quite possibly the most thorough article we’ve ever printed.

The not so distant future.

“Dear Internet,

We’ve grown up together. We both sort of staked out on our own at the same time, we both discovered girls at the same time (heh), we both learned to appreciate absurdity together and we’ve gotten interested in business and thinking about the future and the social good with one another. It’s been great. I like you. We’re a product of the same culture, it seems.

But, I think there’s one area where I’ve grown up a bit faster than you have. As I get older, I respect the idea that not everything can be free. I have a desire to pay for things, internet, and through your obsession with free, you’re not letting me. I’m not sitting on an abundance of cash here, but I desire to really vote with my dollars. I want to use the tools on the internet, but I’d like to pay for them, thank you very much.”

Here’s the text in full, and here’s a post from the following day in which he talks about a reader’s response to his initial post. More good reading about the nature of content, on the future of content consumption, and the politics of free.

One of the standout sessions from that year was a workshop called “Mobile Journalism: Embracing the MoJo’s Backpack.” It was taught by the then editor of IndyStar.com, whose name I now forget, and it covered every emerging trend for the modern day journalist, including video, photography, audio editing, and writing/reporting/producing on the fly, all out of a trusty backpack. The presenter highlighted Kevin Sites, the standout video journalist hired by Yahoo News in 2005 to report from war zones around the world, almost always by himself. Sites relied on his toolkit (see: backpack) to cover some of the most important stories of this decade, and he did it better alone than most do with a team. Considered by many to be the “granddaddy” of backpack journlists, Sites pretty much set the bar for a new age of reporters.

I left that session confident, because by that time I had already started backpack reporting, not because of the cool titles associated with it, but out of necessity. As a reporter and multimedia producer/editor at The Lantern, I started carrying a high-quality audio recorder in my backpack at all times, along with my camera, a notebook and, of course, pens. You never knew when an irate preacher would be proselytizing on the Oval, or when a random bum would bust out into a rap.  I was unwittingly doing what would become required of most journalists in the coming years, and it was reassuring to know I had a head start. Given the economics of today’s newsroom, reporters can’t just focus on reporting and writing: now, every reporter needs to be a photographer, videographer and producer. In short- a multimedia storyteller.

Since my days in Columbus, I’ve upgraded and added to my toolkit, and gathered some other useful skills along the way. I’m really interested in seeing what other journalists use in their work, and I’ve become a bit of a tech geek while trying to round out my kit. Here’s a photo of what’s in my backpack, at all times.

In this picture, clockwise from the top left corner, are:

• Nikon D3000 – DSLR camera with a 18-55mm kit lens, a 35mm prime lens, and a 55-200mm zoom lens. The D3000 is on the bottom of the Nikon DSLR scale, but it’s a nice camera, and is quite a few steps above a normal ‘point-and-shoot’ camera. For most assignments, I use the kit lens that’s attached to the body in the picture, because it can go from a wide-angle perspective to a decent zoom easily.
• 1000HA Eee PC – Asus netbook that functions as my primary word processor and photo editor. I also store a small amount of photos on this netbook, but most of my images are on an external hard drive that I keep at my office. This computer is cheap, efficient and, best of all, light, which cuts down on backpack weight and makes lugging it around almost unnoticeable. It does everything I need it to do, except edit video, which I’ll get to in a few more bullets.
• Firewire Cable – For transferring video to a computer.
• Pen and pad – No explanation needed, hopefully.
• Sony Audio Recorder – I use this for longer interviews and for personal notes while doing research. This is an indispensable tool for any journalist. You should have one.
• Panasonic PS-VG120 – 3CCD video camera. This camera is a bit outdated by now (2005) but gets the job done. Because of the size of video files, I can’t edit video on my netbook, which is my only limitation with shooting video. I’m able to transfer and edit video at both of my workplaces: at Wilmington College, and at the Wilmington News Journal. This video camera could be better, but…for what I need, it works fine.
• Smart Phone – Again, no explanation needed. Smart phones enable you to send email, search the Internet, and take photos and video if needed. With the proliferation of smart phones, the Average Joe has the potential to become a citizen journalist. Every news gathering organization worth its weight in salt encourages citizen news input. If they’re not, they will be.

What I’m missing:

• External microphone for video camera.
• A MacBook, for better video and photo workflow.
• Professional audio-recorder, the kind radio journalists employ. I miss the one I would lug around at The Lantern.

There are a number of other small items that I use that I didn’t bother to include in the picture, though they are just as important. They include spare batteries, battery chargers, memory cards, miniDV tapes, USB cables, camera lens filters, extra notebooks and pens, et cetera. I also have a ‘point-and-shoot’ camera that records some surprisingly decent video in a pinch. I used that to take the picture.

In all, my backpack weighs about 25 lbs. and, housed in a nice Columbia daypack, isn’t cumbersome at all to carry.

Are you a Mobile Journalist? What do you have in your kit?

From the post:

“I had long been interested in running my own newspaper,” explains Robrish from his storefront office at 9 South Market Street, previously home to the Inspiritu beauty salon (the sign and shampoo sink are still in place). “And then I saw this town of 12,000 with no newspaper.” For some, investing in a “dying” newspaper industry and moving from Rittenhouse to a 2.6-square mile borough was a crazy move, but for Robrish, it was a no-brainer.

“It’s often said that newspapers are dying, but that’s a gross oversimplification,” stresses Robrish. “The papers with the big problems are the metropolitan dailies. You can get that information from so many sources. But here, if you want to read a professionally written news story about what the Board of Township Supervisors did on Thursday, you really don’t have much choice but to pick up the Elizabethtown Advocate, because I was the only journalist at that meeting. I am the only game in town.”

This is something I’ve learned well over the past three years. At Suburban News Publications in Columbus, readership and advertising both grew over the year I was there. At the Wilmington News Journal here, where I just started working, ad revenue has probably declined over several years, but nothing compared to the hardships the major daily newspapers are experiencing. There will always be a market for hyperlocal news, whether online or in print. The doom and gloom predictions about the future of journalism tend to miss the mark: the medium is changing, not the content. And as long as there are interested, engaged and active people in our small communities, good journalism will be successful indefinitely.

I love how this one picture, taken somewhere in Washington, D.C., completely sums up all of the problems facing the news industry in America. People want content, but they’re not sure they want to pay for it.

In its defense, the Express is supposedly a very good alternative paper in the D.C. metro area, so maybe that’s why D.C.-ites have parted the Red Sea of snow to get to its box. Something tells me the $0 price tag helps a bit, too.