Life According to Krista

Here are some of the most important tips Mark Potts gave us when visiting our Communication 361 class:

• In the last year or two, more people have begun to get their news from online instead of from a newspaper.
• Only unique news products can be successful. You must find a way to separate yourself from the competition.
• Declining reader interest/irrelevancy. People don’t read the newspaper like they used to, which means declining circulation and ad revenue.
• Craigslist decimated classified section. Now people aren’t paying newspapers for ads (which was about 50% of their incoming revenue).
• The bottom line: “the news business as we know it is screwed”
• The argument that people will miss newspapers is not valid because people are not necessarily still interested in reading a paper; they can find news on their computers at home.
• “Crappy newspaper executives are a bigger threat to journalism’s future than any changes wrought by the Internet” -John Paton
• Google, Yahoo and Facebook are muscling out traditional media.
• Print is still a $25 billion business, however it is continuing to decrease.
• The future is now. We need to focus on online journalism and what is popular now, so that we can keep up with the competition.
• Some papers are transitioning to online news by only printing papers certain days of the week or by having an entirely online news site and not printing papers at all anymore.
• Clay Shirky wrote an interesting article called “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable” about what is happening in the journalism field.
• There will be more destruction of traditional media in the future. Big print newspapers have about 5 years left.
• There are a lot of new voices in todays media such as blogs, startups, hyperlocal sites, and niches.
• One of the main goals for journalism is to have a large audience. It’s easy to gain a wide range of viewers through the internet and reach people from all over the world.
• There are always new technologies and websites that are coming out. Things will continue to change and grow.
• News with friends: the merging of personal and public news. This is becoming more prevalent with sites like Facebook and Twitter.
• Mobile news is becoming popular. Phones, tablets–the world. Your world in your hand.
• TV/mobile convergence: keep an eye on the Second Screen. People are using their laptops and televisions simultaneously in order to interact with other audience members.
• New forms of advertising, such as Groupon, are coming out.
• We’re in a golden age of journalism. There is more journalism, being committed in more ways, by more people, than ever before.
• Be a disrupter! Create something new and different that will attract people and revolutionize what is out there.
• Learn how the news business works.
• Build what you like and that reflects what you do. Turn your passion into a new innovation.
• Final thought: go out and invent the future.

These were a few of the main tips Potts gave our class for breaking into the news business. He was a very knowledgable and motivating speaker and I hope this blogpost helps share some of his good advice.

Lastly, at the end of class Professor Steve Klein said something that stood out. Create your own job because many of the jobs that are out there right now will probably not be there in the next few years.