fix journalism a conversation about journalism’s future

Author: Michael Higdon | 06.19.2009

For my regular readers, jump over to here (Charles Apple’s blog) to read about a crazy miscommunication that lead to chaos inside the Society for News Design. Also here (check out the right column for updates), for SND’s series of articles about the mishap.

In a nutshell, miscommunication about finding a new location for the society and new executive director led to some sort of fallout between SND board of directors resulting in the resignation of its president, two board members, a regional director and perhaps a dozen or more regular members.

In this post, I wanted to reflect some of my thoughts about what happened and to members’ reactions and the state of the society, which I believe relates directly to the state of journalism.

I’ve been reading the comments on Charles’ post (linked above) and what interests me most about this, is how much members have suddenly started caring about the society again. It seems as if we all come together for a gigantic conference in an expensive major city every year and SND is the biggest toughest shit in the country. Then the weekend ends and we kind of ignore each other and the society again until it’s time to win awards (that we bitch about).

Josh Crutchmer  made some great points in his article “SND Members: We have Three Choices.” Though I can’t say I agree with “The Society for News Design is dead,” I do think we all need to get involved more. I think Douglas Jessmer has the qualifier right here: “SND isn’t dead. It just smells funny.”

Despite the negatives of the resignations and what have you, which I’m not negating, the “debacle” can be seen as a focusing point. It would be extraordinarily smart for SND leadership to capitalize on the rallying point they created rather than waiting for it to blow over.

The resignations serve as a moment to answer questions about what we do and why, get people riled up and revved up for what comes next. But the leadership instead appears to be treating it like a forest fire. Eventually it’ll put itself out and we continue on our way, not caring again. 

WHAT IS SND FOR?

As in school, you get out of something what you put into it. To sit around and expect SND to do things for you doesn’t make sense. Why would you pay $300 to receive a competition book in the mail rather than attending events or hosting events or participating?

Josh (not last name) commented that no one would notice if SND disappeared. I can’t say many of us agree with that. Yes there are other tools out there, but SND is a huge support structure. You can tell by Rob Schneider’s passionate question in the live chat with Matt Mansfield.

At first I wondered how Rob could combine the problems with the industry and the economy with the problems in SND. Obviously SND didn’t cause the problems nor can they do anything to fix them. But I was approaching the question wrong. Realistically SND can’t do anything about newspapers, obviously they even can’t deal with their own BS. But emotionally, SND serves as this beacon of hope for us. It’s a feeling of friendship and togetherness that the Society for Professional Journalists, APME, APPE, ACP, As Ps Ms and other Es can’t duplicate.

Some of the best reasons/ideas for staying with SND can be found in the comments on Charles Apple’s post and at SND Update (links at top).

Nicole Bogdas:

… is there any way we could try pairing or grouping folks like me with a more advanced Web/Video/Multi-Media member to use as a touchstone during our personal training? … but I’m sitting down with HTML for Dummies and I’ve got a quick question about something I don’t understand, or I want someone to take a quick look at a project, even if it’s bad, just to make sure I’ve got the technology under control.

I would add to that: there are a lot of young people with more skills than us because of what they are learning in/out of school and they could use a professional mentor as much as we could use them for their technological skills. It would be a great exchange program.

It’s obvious to me people are passionate about their society. Whether they are upset or hopeful, there’s not been this kind of online participation on any of the blogs ever. 100 comments on the live chat post. I remember when I first joined four years ago, VisualEditors, Apple, SportsDesigner we’re always bustling with great conversation. Now not so much. Granted there are some pretty extenuating circumstances that probably answer that question.

But as a society, we do a pretty lousy job of keeping in touch and forming a coherent unit. Visual Editors has a good thing going but it mostly lives online. How do we marry the networking of SND conferences with continuous conversations that are 1) cheap 2) useful?

If we’re so damned advanced why is SND.org one of the worst web sites, functionally, that I visit? It looks nice but half the links don’t work, the members area is rarely anything worthwhile, it’s not updated much. What’s the deal? How are we supposed to stay connected to the society if it won’t stay connected to us?

Yuri Victor reminds us how and what SND is for in his comment:

SND is a clique like a bar is a clique, we’re doing the same thing and we’re in this together, we might as well be friends.

When I started working at The Times, MattE and I got along because we understood each other. He said I was a shit designer and I was a shit designer, but he and others like Theresa Badovich (SND member) and Bill Thornbro (SND member) and Ben Cunningham (SND member) wouldn’t let me be shit. They challenged me and infected me and I’m better because of them.

I of course, enjoy the references to drinking throughout. I have similar experiences. Deborah Withey, who I thought would never talk to me, was my mentor for a while after we met in Boston. Charles has always been a great continuing mentor for me and tons of young people all over the country. The same with other people I never would’ve come in contact with if it weren’t for SND. I sat with people for hours into the night looking over my shitty college pages and I took those pages home and got better. Ron Johnson was the first person who ever thought I could amount to anything. Matt Mansfield and I carry on long conversations on Twitter and we’ve never met.

So,

We have a choice. We can talk about problems or we can fix them. Right now we have a problem much bigger than resignations, we work for a hurting industry. We can turn journalism right. We can succeed. This is the SND I know. This is the SND I’ve always known. This is the SND I love. And I do love you all. First round is on me. And yes, I’m buying shots.

More drinking with Yuri!

NOW WHAT DO WE DO?

Matt Mansfield, former president, breaks down some steps for moving forward:

• Clarify and communicate what SND does
• Stop the turf wars on the board
• Communicate, communicate, communicate
• Look ahead and be transparent
• Look outward for success stories
• Invite new people into the process
• Do more pioneering programming than ever
• Keep growing internationally
• Be industry leaders
• Change with the times
• Connect, connect, connect
• See the whole world of news design

I can’t say that this list doesn’t look like something journalism needs to do as a whole rather than as a segmented group. But perhaps our group can do these things first and lead by example?

I’d like to posit a list of my own:

Capitalize on this focusing point right this second. Do not wait for people to forget you screwed up. Move forward NOW! There are points in history where the world or a group or a culture pay attention to something and change quickly. They are called paradigm shifts. This is one of those opportunities.

Take everyone’s advice. Members have provided a lot of feedback not normally available. Do it. Robb Montgomery proposed some really great ideastoday, such as changing the non-profit status of the society, re-approaching bylaws and more. I think his blog is specifically directed at the leadership of SND and it would be wise for them to pay attention as I’m sure they are. Then make sure there is a place for members to regularly provide feedback from today on into forever. Where the hell can we go to be heard other than when you piss us off? Nowhere. So make somewhere for us to go when we’re not pissed.

SND is no longer a society of print journalists, get over it.Many members lament that we’re no longer true to our craft. We’re not prepress people anymore. It’s odd that we can call ourselves forward thinking and still lament about that fact. That’s not to say print is dying more than we need to diversify ourselves and our membership in order to invent new jobs for ourselves. We’re not the only designers out there anymore. It’s tough, I know. I just graduated and had to spend the last year ignoring print in order to ensure I could get a job.  I still suck at new media, we all do. Let’s get better. Web design has just started, it’ll be like 2004! It’s like getting all your pages in color all over again. There are  a limited number of set web usability conventions and they’re not all that different than print.

Let’s set the agenda for how web design develops in news.Web is scary because there is code and code doesn’t make much sense if you’re used to point and click design. But it’s not that hard if you try to relate CSS coding to InDesign’s control panel. Seriously. Think of the designers building pages on A-techs, CSS would’ve been a breeze for them. Figure it out. Meet Lynda, she’s a  very nice cheap date (only cost $25 a month) and she will tell you anything you want to know. She will multiply your success rate and ability to get jobs, both freelance and professional. I like developers because they are smart, but their web design skills suck and they know it. Go join their team and make their amazingly functional websites look approachable.

Continue in the direction we were going. We had a lot of good things going. SND needs to be more flexible, more nimble insofar as accommodating members. Steal, like Robb said. Look at how WordCamps are held and Ignite events. Build smaller, permanent ”cliques” that can rely on each other.

Learn from one another without the formal hoopla. I watch people at my new job sit and learn from each other all day (miraculously it’s a bunch of print designers). We ask each other questions, we show each other cool tricks, we learn how to do each other’s jobs. How do we make that part of the society?

Those are my attempts at adding to the conversation. I wish I could paste all of the comments and suggestions from everyone else here, but that would be a bit over kill.

Oh yah, make the damned web site better! That web site is a huge missed opportunity. Blogging is not the future, blogging is only one way to get people involved (and not really involved more than watching). We saw how powerful Cover It Live was the other day. What about Twitter hash tags? All of these tools for intra-society communication and we’re completely missing the ball. Bleh! Get with it! 

Like I told my professors, if for one moment, a student can get up and teach the class, you have become obsolete. You have teachers in SND and SND as a unit is a teacher. Us slightly less active members are your students. Don’t let us make you obsolete!

Addendum: Many people have noted that the above is a bad metaphor and I agree with them. I’ll use an anecdote to describe what I mean instead.

I think it’s great when teachers learn from students, when they work together side by side. I think I’m talking more about a student who, in consternation, jumps up and must teach the class because the teacher is unable or unwilling to admit they are wrong. For example, a professor yelled at students that the Internet was not important, that multimedia tools did not matter. A student in that class got up and walked out because the teacher had nothing to offer her. She could teach the class better. The professor was unwilling to listen or to learn from someone. On the contrary, a teacher willing to let a student take over to teach an entire lesson he/she knows better, is a smart teacher. And that’s the kind of smart teacher SND needs to be.

But more than anything else: Dear inactive members. Get the hell off your ass and do something? Please?