fix journalism a conversation about journalism’s future

Author: Michael Higdon | 09.03.2008

In approaching the budget crisis faced by the Nevada System of Higher Education, staffers at my paper were thinking of ways to get user feedback.

Initially we wanted to do a video/podcast asking people “How would you fix the budget?”  This seems like a useless question as most students don’t have the necessary information to broach the topic, let alone answer the question. Also, what makes us think we’ll find a golden student who can answer this question better than the administration

But we still want reader involvement, not just talking heads, right? And without worrying about being scientific since we don’t have the grant money for that, how do we ask people about the budget crisis in a smart and useful way.

So then we thought, let’s ask students, “What’s important to you on campus and what is not?”

I find this a much better gauge for the topic. Instead of asking people to look outward and solve issues, ask them to look inward and talk about what interests them, what effects them and what preferences they have?

Keep your readers in a comfort zone (themselves) so they can speak from experiences. An additional piece of that question, “What campus services do you use, not use?”

You could do these in different ways, via informal survey online (allows for more thought) or through video though I suspect you’d get a lot of “ummmmmmmmm.”

This question also prevents people from falsely associating changes in the school as effects of the budget cuts. Right now, not a whole lot has changed visibly for students.

This also sends a clearer message to people in important places. Who cares about a bunch of students trying to solve something even the regents and legislatures can’t seem to solve. These questions are a better litmus test that tells university officials what they can consider over things they should not consider cutting.