Citizen journalism workshop in Detroit area

If you live in a northern suburb of Detroit and would like to be a citizen journalist, read on.

The Journal Register Company-owned Independent Newspapers, Inc., plans to offer a three-hour workshop for budding citizen journalists.

To be held in New Baltimore, Michigan (just north of Lake St. Clair), the workshop will be free of cost to participants, and held in the premises of The Voice Newspapers at 51180 Bedford St., New Baltimore, MI 48047.

Residents of Macomb county and around may contact workshop organizer Jeff Payne at 586-716-8100 (ext. 304) to register. In a brief telephone conversation, Mr. Payne said the date and time of the workshop would be decided based on the number and preferences of the participants.

INI's site indicates that the company publishes more than two dozen community newspapers in four states.

"It's all about the content. It's not about the medium"

Steve Damish, the award-winning managing editor of the Enterprise of Brockton, Massachusetts, says America's newspapers will adapt to survive.

Speaking at the University of New Hampshire last week, Mr. Damish invoked Charles Darwin to say, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, but the one who is most adaptable to change."

Jennifer Keefe reports for the Foster's Daily Democrat:

"It's all about the content. It's not about the medium" [Mr. Damish said].

Milk, he said, comes in glass bottles, cardboard cartons and plastic containers. But it's still milk. This scenario, he contended, is very much the same for newspapers.

"We are the farmers of information," he told the students, adding that even though there might be fewer farmers in the world than there were many years ago, they're able to feed more people because of the tools now are at their disposal. It's these tools, he continued, that journalists need to use to be competitive and make the news industry thrive. . . .

"We've made it appear that our milk is watered down because we're giving it away for free," he said. "Citizen journalists think they can do it the way we do, but who else can do what we know how to do?"

More here.

Also read: Newspapers' closure adversely affects political engagement, study finds
And: Colorado town stops whining about its dead newspapers, starts a new one
And: Scholars call for tax credit for buying newspapers
And: Should the newspaper industry get a bailout?

"Newspapers should use their brand online"

In the past, John Duncan, the former managing editor of London's Observer, has advised newspapers to not "strip resources from their print products to nurture websites."

Now Duncan is advising newspapers to keep their brand in order to hold their market niche. When all is said and done, citizen journalism cannot by definition benefit from a brand.

From the latest Deal:

"Journalists hate the word, but newspapers have great brand," Duncan says. "It's not fake. It's not a lie. Newspapers have an incredible relationship and substantial amount of trust with readers."

The problem has been applying that brand online. No less an authority than Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt has called the Internet a "cesspool" of misinformation, and has said the imprimatur of trusted "brands" is needed to help people sort the good data from the bad.

If brands do in fact have such value, newspapers may use their credibility with readers to get into new types of content, such as diet clubs or other areas that lie outside of news but appeal to popular interest. When the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News announced they would not deliver the paper seven days a week, the papers touted new digital efforts they hoped to expand, in addition to online news. These included Web sites www.MomsLikeMe.com, a social networking site for mothers, and www.Highschoolsports.net, a nationwide venture that combines news coverage by journalists, high school coaches and players.

Detroit newspapers cut home delivery rather than diminish journalism

I live in snowy white Michigan, where the grit and resilience of a foundering economy are on display via the newspaper industry.

Detroit's newspapers are trying hard to keep the presses rolling, but without ink or newsprint -- apparently taking inspiration from the Christian Science Monitor. John Morton writes in the latest American Journalism Review about the alternative approach in an industry rife with owners who have "cut back on their newsroom rosters and their journalism."

So what else might newspapers do? Well, comes now Detroit's joint operating agency, which publishes the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, with a startling new approach to cost-cutting. Instead of diminishing the journalism, the agency will eliminate home-delivery of the newspapers on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday.

Here's why this could save a lot of money. Most seven-day dailies are fattest in pages and advertising on Thursday, Friday and Sunday, with Sunday alone often accounting for 40 percent or more of weekly revenue. Even profitable newspapers, which the Detroit agency says its dailies are not, often lose money on thin publishing days. But it is traditional that daily newspapers publish, well, daily. There's also a sense of civic obligation to do so.

The Detroit newspapers will still print daily editions (the News does not print on Sunday), but on non-delivery days they will be available only at newsstands, stores and coin boxes. Subscribers with Internet access also will be able to read complete versions of the papers online.

Detroit executives say that by halting home delivery four days a week, the agency will save 12,000 metric tons of newsprint annually, which is worth more than $8 million a year at current prices. Other major savings will come from lower distribution costs�"trucks, drivers, fuel. The agency expects the plan to allow it to reduce its 2,100-member work force by 9 percent, which I estimate is worth about $9 million a year. The two newsrooms, which are independent of the agency, will not be affected.

As Dave Hunke, chief executive of the agency and publisher of the Free Press, has said: "We need to spend less money on paper, fuel and ink and spend more on journalism."

As I watch the chaste snowflakes flitting down Michigan's frigid sky, Mr. Hunke's words make good sense.