Friday, September 25, 2009
UC Berkeley Threatens Bay Area Journalism
Business / Education / Media Robert Gammon — Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 11:28 AM
UC Berkeley's journalism school is teaming up with a wealthy San Francisco financier and KQED radio to create a non-profit news website, according to the New York Times. But the venture also threatens traditional news media in the Bay Area, because it will rely on 120 journalism students at Cal who will work for free. The massive free-labor workforce will give the new venture a huge advantage over established Bay Area media organizations that depend on paid, veteran journalists to gather and put together news stories.
The new venture, which is being initially financed by a $5 million grant by investor Warren Hellman, also threatens the long-term fortunes of the journalism students themselves. The venture will be a boon to the students in the short-term because it will give them valuable experience, but if it also forces Bay Area news organizations to make further cuts to stay competitive, then the students will be unable to find journalism jobs once they graduate.
Likewise, the new venture promises to be bad for the public over the long term. It's true that the Bay Area likely will experience an increase in local news coverage right away, but if the new venture forces traditional news organizations to further contract, then the public will be forced to increasingly depend on inexperienced, unpaid students to inform them about what's happening in the region.
Let's hope UC Berkeley and KQED seriously rethink this plan before it goes live early next year. The idea of a non-profit news organization has merit, but using what amounts to slave labor to make it happen is bad for journalism.
Comments (12)
Showing 1-12 of 12
I'd like to clear up a couple of things in this post: No. 1, students at UC Berkeley have no direct involvement in the Bay Area News Project. The as-yet-unnamed project will have its own staff. The J-School will hold a position on the project's board of directors, and will provide some editorial direction, but no staff.
KQED, likewise, is not staffing this project. There may be some news-sharing, and the idea is that both the project and KQED will benefit from this partnership.
Secondly, the NYT has yet to agree to a formal partnership with the project.
Lastly, as a J-School student, I feel I should defend the students here at Berkeley. Almost all of us come here from newsrooms around the state and country. Many of us, myself included, were recently laid off. The notion that "student journalism" is poor journalism is simply incorrect. The students here produce some amazing work -- work that the traditional news outlets in the Bay Area are unable to do because of the thinning of news staffs and elimination of beats.
This project has many merits, and I look forward to seeing it come to life.
-Ian Stewart
like
dislike
I'm currently a senior at the Missouri School of Journalism, and the program you have just described is exactly what happens at Mizzou, Mr. Gammon, and yet Columbia - the city Mizzou is in - has plenty of for-profit media outlets that, while not untouched the problems currently plaguing the industry, are doing fine. Mizzou owns and operates The Columbia Missourian (columbiamissourian.com), which is published web-first and also operates as a daily newspaper. It is, as a state university-owned newspaper, non-for-profit, and yes, it's staffed by students, who are unpaid. Mizzou also owns the local NBC affiliate, KOMU, which is also staffed by students, and competes well with other local television stations, but none of these local stations have been run out of business by KOMU. It's healthy competition. As long as these other newspapers continue to publish quality journalism, they will be just fine. Columbia has functioned this way for decades.
Furthermore, I would warn you and your commenters against thinking these journalism students cannot produce quality journalism. Last time I checked, journalism across the country was in quite a tough spot, with journalists not trusted by the public and losing readers by the fistful. It wasn't these young, inexperienced students who put the industry in that fix, but seasoned professionals. Maybe some innovative, fresh young talent is exactly what is needed.
In defense of those 120 unpaid, inexperienced student journalists, I would like to ask: Where else can these recent grads go to get the journalistic experience they need in order to (one day) become paid, experienced professional journalists? Granted, I'll admit up front that I am biased in this opinion because I happen to be a recent journalism grad that is working for a nonprofit journalism organization in Seattle, but for many like me, working in this type of organization is the only way we have of gaining any sort of reporting experience. Forget paying jobs with established media; even nonpaying internships with established publications are very hard to obtain. Therefore, rather than letting our training go to waste, we seek out (often times) the only reporting/writing opportunities available to us: blogging or "slave labor."
Megan Jeffrey
Chris O’Brien,
This blog post was merely a commentary on the news presented in the New York Times article from last week. As is typical of the vast majority of blog posts on this site, it does not include independent reporting, but instead offers opinion or analysis or attempts to point out general news trends. Having said that, I was unaware of the Media Guild’s involvement in this — the guild is not mentioned in the Times story. But even if the guild backs this project, it doesn’t mean it will be good for traditional journalism. I was a longtime union rep with the guild, and I can attest to the fact that they’ve made some mistakes over the years — and this appears to be another one. The widespread use of unpaid students to compete against paid journalists is not “competition” in any sense of the word, and should not receive the support of a union whose primary duty is to look out for the welfare of those paid journalists.
As for the group’s claim that it will hire about two dozen professionals at the start, that’s a good beginning, and I welcome it. But there is no doubt that this venture will rely heavily on the free content provided by students. The Times story stated clearly that the venture will depend on “the expertise and labor to be supplied by KQED-FM, which has a 28-person news staff, and the 120 students of the University of California, Berkeley’s graduate school of journalism.”
Ikegently,
The FAQ’s at the Bay Area News Project also state: “We are thrilled to have UC Berkeley's renowned journalism faculty and dozens of talented graduate students involved in the Bay Area News Project.” Also, the New York Times has not yet decided whether it will be involved in the project.
VID3699,
I’m not afraid of competition, nor is anyone else here at the Express. If Warren Hellman wanted to finance a nonprofit venture that employed professional journalists to compete with traditional media outlets, I would have no problem with that. In fact, I would welcome the experiment. But that’s not what this venture is.
Bill Wallace,
The Chauncey Bailey Project was primarily funded and run by MediaNews and other Bay Area news organizations who paid they’re journalists to collect, write, and edit news stories about Mr. Bailey’s murder. The Bay Area News Project, by contrast, plans to use unpaid students.
I agree with you that MediaNews has a slash-and-burn business model. I worked for the Oakland Tribune for six years. And if a journalism venture came along, for profit or not-for-profit, and put MediaNews out of business, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I just don’t think that venture should rely on unpaid workers to do it.
As for the Chronicle, you know as well as I do that Hearst has made massive cuts over the years because the paper was losing more than $50 million annually. From that perspective, the Chron did attempt to invest heavily in the news business, and it couldn’t make a go of it, and that happened while competing with other news organizations that actually pay their employees. There is no doubt that the Chron is threatened by a new well-financed venture that will rely on free labor.
As for the Express and its listings, they’re very popular with readers, and it would be a mistake for us to get rid of them. And of course we would love to beef up our local coverage, but we haven’t been able to figure out how to do that and not lose lots of money — unless, of course, we were to rely far more heavily on free student labor.
Pam Patterson,
Name one San Francisco blog, or even a series of blogs, that can compete in terms of depth and breadth of coverage with the San Francisco Chronicle. They don’t exist, and they won’t anytime soon. The idea that traditional news media are going to be replaced with unpaid bloggers who cover their communities because of unselfish love, while holding public and private institutions accountable at the same time, in my opinion, is one of the great myths of the Internet Age. Sure, there are some exceptions, but how long will those bloggers keep doing it essentially for free?
Max Allstadt,
I agree that this new venture could end up producing poor journalism, and as a result, may not survive over the long term. My concern, however, is with the short-term effects on traditional news media outlets, as a venture that carries the respected names of KQED radio and UC Berkeley siphons readers from news websites, and makes it tougher for them to earn a living.
— Robert Gammon
If you take some time to do some reporting on this, start with this simple question: Why would the Media Guild lead this effort if they thought it was going to threaten jobs? Had you done the most basic reporting, you would realize that the organizers have said they plan to hire about two dozen professionals from the start. Given that that several hundred journalists in the Bay Area have been fired over the past several years, this is a drop in the bucket. But still, it's a start.
Beyond that, I hope a little competition will force other media organizations to stop focusing on cuts as a solutions and turn toward investing in new strategies. If they stay the course, and continue to cut their newsrooms, you can't blame Hellman and this new organization for that shortsightedness.
Chris O'Brien
Business Columnist
San Jose Mercury News
Why are people saying that the stories will be written exclusively by students? Nothing says this. The FAQs at the Bay Area News Project (http://www.bayareanewsproject.org/faq/) mention their "professional newsroom." I would guess that some input will be student generated, but much will be professionally written. Probably all will be professionally edited.
KQED, the NT Times and the Berkeley J-School partner up, and people are worried about decreasing quality of news in the Bay area? That does not make sense to me.
If Robert Gammon is using himself as an example of the writing that will be challenged... the sooner the better. Even his current post is alarming in its lack of insight. His outlook seems to be that readers in the Bay Area are so bereft of interest in quality journalism that they will flock to mediocre student writers. He is wrong. However, readers will flock to well crafted and insightful journalism... student or not.
He continues with unfounded speculation that local news organizations will contract because they can't compete with free writers. They can compete with better writing, better stories, better coverage. Thank you Warren for providing us with a choice. Rather than looking toward a new reason for better journalism, new journalistic collaborations, and a better informed community, Robert would have us reading his sometimes erroneous articles.... and paying him for it. Lets give it a try Robert, rise to the challenge rather than shudder at the unknown.
First of all, let's understand what we are talking about here. The Bay Area News Project isn't some sleazy conspiracy by the University of California to put local newspapers out of business. It is an initiative started by past and present SF Chronicle employees in an effort to insure some level of responsible local news coverage.
Claiming that it is an end-around the local newspapers that threatens their continued existence is a lot of conspiratorial twaddle. It is no more true of the Bay Area News Project than it is of the Chauncey Bailey project, which is a non-profit organization hosted and supported by San Jose State University.
Having set the record straight, I am afraid that I don't see how this effort threatens professional news organizations in the slightest. The fact is, professional news organizations are already under a considerable threat as a direct result of their own corporate structure and greed and their utter lack of interest in serving the public in any sort of useful way.
Don't kid yourself that local daily newspapers are getting rid of professional staff because they can't compete with students working for free. They are getting rid of professional staff because they have to pay them and provide them with minimal benefits. That cuts into the bottom line and that is all the local commercial news organizations are interested in.
The largest news organization in the Bay Area is the Bay Area News Group which has cut its staff to the bone and palms off virtually the same weak editorial product in every community it ostensibly serves. The Chronicle, my old newspaper, has also decimated its staff, eliminated its award-winning investigative reporting team and slashed its bureau system.
Despite these cuts, the news hole of both organizations continues to disappear. Neither regularly staffs most local government agencies and when they do the coverage is sporadic and superficial.
These things didn't happen because BANG and the Chronicle were threatened by non-profits or couldn't compete with cheap student labor. In fact, both take advantage of student copy whenever possible, and an increasing amount of the editorial material run by both consists of items by non-staff freelancers. As the risk of seeming boorish, unless things have changed markedly since I was a freelancer, the paychecks received by local freelancers -- including many who write for the Bay Guardian, the SF Weekly and, yes, the East Bay Express -- is merely nominal, and none, to my knowledge, receive any benefits.
If the Express wants to push for better local news coverage, instead of bemoaning the Bay Area News Project's effort to provide some, why doesn't it cut back on its voluminous entertainment listings and run more serious local coverage of the various city councils, planning boards and regional authorities in the Bay Area? That is what we are not getting from the dailies these days.
Bill Wallace
Communication lecturer,
Cal State East Bay
The problem is that 120 unpaid students can generate a lot of copy, and that a partnership with KQED and a $5 million grant can get that copy a lot of exposure.
However, the risk is that the copy that gets generated and put out for the people to read... probably won't be good copy. It certainly will suffer from a lack of context. History and sources take a lot longer to cultivate than the amount of time available to a graduate journalism student. And what happens on spring break?
I'm not a journalist. I'm not even really a blogger, but I know journalists. I know bloggers, and I know political insiders, and because of this, I have frequently known about major stories in Oakland long before they broke.
"This town leaks like a sieve," that's a direct quote from a major newspaper journalist in the Bay Area, to me a few months back. He was right. But it won't leak like a sieve to a bunch of students who are new to the town and haven't been able to go drinking with politicians and technocrats for years on end.
As a result, we can expect coverage from this project to have less context. We can also expect these student journalists to have no idea which public records to look to to back up or fact check a story. You can't develop that expertise in a two year program. And if they're writing copy from day one, they sure as shit won't know that they're talking about half way into semester one or even semester two.
Without masterful oversight from people with real experience, without incredible mentors, this program really is something of a danger to the quality of local news.
it sounds like 120 unpaid, undertrained journalism students are avery real threat to the paid, experienced and professional reporters in the area. If that is the case, then why do we need to pay the professional reporters? Are the professionals that weak? Is it that easy to do a professional reporting job? It might be if all you do is read the AP feeds.
120 unpaid, undertrained journalism undergraduates are not going to threaten Bay Area news any more than every independent blogger out there who thinks their opinion is as valuable as an experienced, professional reporter. The Cal Daily features student news coverage too, but it's not the reason the Chronicle is going under. WAKE UP. The traditional press and journalism have experienced a cultural and technological sea-change, just like network programming has been usurped by cable TV. You can't stop competition or progress. The public will go to the best source for their news, whomever that will be. Quality will trump in the end.
It's not just bad for journalism. It will make for bad journalism.
It's one thing when abetteroakland.com founder vsmoothe works for free; she's got years of rolodex building and experience in sifting through mounds of public records. She has some sense of the history of East Bay Politics.
But a first or second year journalism student? Can we expect quality coverage when that's who's writing the stories? What sense of context can we expect a 19-year old, fresh off the bus from Iowa to bring to the job?
All of this makes me think that this is somewhat less scary that you're making it out to be, Mr. Gammon. A 5 million dollar bad idea is still a bad idea. The bay area blogosphere has a head start, as do SFGate's hyper-local blogs InOakland, InMarin and InAlameda. The Express needs to catch up in the online game, but in my view, this is more about formatting and partnerships than reinventing the wheel.
The Bay Area demands quality news. If this new program can't deliver that, it will fail.
