Disrupting Journalism Education via Newsletters
An Assignment for Media Students that Blends Journalistic Expertise with Product Development, Tool Selection and UX
by Jody Brannon, manager, Disruptive Journalism Educators Network
It’s clear that students need an overarching understanding of the complexities of building products and using a variety of tools to tell stories. As grads rise in their news organization, they’ll be asked to manage projects (big like launching a CMS or small like handling a newsletter). In all they do, they must continue to push for a refined audience experience which is often dependent on inferior tools or processes, a hands-on perspective that their bosses often don’t fully understand.
A recent post by Josh Stearns in his “Media Nut” newsletter, which includes very realistic views from an editorially oriented Bleacher Report product manager, matches my perspective: “Product managers are like an infantry to the senior executive general class, having a ground-level view of what works and what doesn’t. Their challenge is that often, senior leadership doesn’t listen. And any general that doesn’t listen to its troops winds up pivoting to video.”
We must build students with the lifelong ability to gain confidence to manage and/or to disrupt “what works and what doesn’t.”
Below is a course component designed to do just that.
GOALS: Use newsletters as a means to expose students to concepts of editorial product development, project management, audience development and distribution strategies, while refining news judgment, developing reportorial rigor, addressing journalistic transparency and building awareness of entrepreneurial complexities.
ULTIMATE MISSION: For students to understand the complexities of and overlapping relationship between audience, product and technology.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: Students will
• Examine the newsletter marketplace, learning to recognize merits/drawbacks of various approaches
• Select a topic/niche that could either develop their reputation as an “expert” and/or fill a market need.
• Learn value of curation vs. aggregation
• Develop strategies to deal with news volume
• Test tools for curation and aggregation
• Distribute their topic
•Explore analytics systems
• Critique the process of discovery, development, tools and realities of establishing such a project
• Know what’s involved in newsletter production, as that is often a newsroom responsibility given to young hires
HOW THIS HAS WORKED FOR ME: This approach was an element of the capstone project of grad students in interactive journalism. They were expected to immerse themselves in current and past overage of their topic.
TOOL USE AND EVALUATION: I reviewed free tools I used to curate the flood of information of interest to me, discussing the pros and cons of each. I reviewed RSS feeds (I use Bazqux and Vienna for Mac), Google alerts, Tweet streams and Siftlinks (turns friends’ Twitter accounts into an RSS feed, or use it for keywords and phrases). Then each student picked a different curation tool (there are many, as a quick search shows — probably enough for a class of 24 but students could pair up. [Here is a post using Revue, in which I analyze tools used by myself and students; newsletter and curation fans use Zeef to share groupings of various tools.]. Students were expected to add stories to their tool each week, and we discussed their opinions, frustrations and merits of their tools, especially in light of those used by classmates and the level of customization offered. Examples: MailChimp’s customization, Scoop’s artificial Intelligence, Nuzzel’s makeshift personalization. True customization comes at a price (meaning, the free ones offer little editorial control.) As a final exercise, each student curates their classmates’ work using the tool they chose: Example: BagtheWeb. Note: Two years after this spring 2015 cohort graduated, many of the tools have died, including Spundge, which I used to curate and comment on their projects. My current favorite is Goodbits.io. Also important: check on the tool’s analytics, mostly as a means to build awareness.
NEWSLETTER ANALYSIS: We discussed the state of newsletters, their use (or not) and ones they like or don’t. [Here’s a list that of newsletters admired by journalism professors (and their students) from the Disruptive Journalism Educators Network and the ONA Educators FB group. In mid-September 2017, students, especially women favor TheSkimm, which I contrast with the now-defunct Kicker or WTFJHT and a niche newsletter like TheMuse. Other talking points might be a newsletter like the significant reporting in Mike Allen’s Axios AM, Matt Thomas, an American Studies scholar who digests the Sunday New York Times, and Rachel Schallom, who turned to producing “Best in Visual Storytelling” to build her brand during a job hunt and gained so many users (and a job at the Wall Street Journal) that she now has a free and $5/year version and a list of newsletters she follows.]
For the cohort exercise, the 12 students selected a newsletter to follow from either one of 3 categories: general news, business/tech or health/science so that their would be four samples to study. By Class 3 (this class met once a week), they brought a printout of one, and I taped them around the room by topic. Everyone voted for their favorite in each of the 3 areas. We then discussed each group, incorporating voice, length, approach, frequency, format and design, and how the newsletter matched the organization’s identity or mission. We then voted for the best among the 3 topic finalists, and the student whose topic received the most votes got kudos (I used to bestow Kudos bars, which are no longer sold; so now I often give 100,000 Grand bars).
TRANSPARENCY: A final component of many of my assignments is a post of self-evaluation, in the spirit of ProPublica’s Nerd Blog, subtitled “How we make stuff.” The students’ level with the audience, explaining pressures of time, deadline, tool malfunction, coding challenges, etc. In this example, since the students curated their topic over the course of the semester, they also evaluated their curation tool. Those who really impressed me would suggest ways the tool would be improved. Message: Staff should feel empowered to step forward and make suggestions, both incremental and disruptive.
TAKEAWAYS: Beyond the learning objectives, students have a greater understanding of some very realistic challenges they’ll face in the course of their career: tools, and how they impact their own performance as well as the audience experience. From my perspective at producing three professional newsletters, this is a great assignment that helps student realize that UX pertains to front- and back-end content development — an integrated experience that is difficult to convey in some classes. Message: Staff should feel empowered to step forward and make suggestions, both incremental and disruptive.
OF RELATED INTEREST FROM TOW-KNIGHT DISRUPTIVE EDUCATORS
- Curation Assignment by Jake Batsell of SMU: “…A practice aggregation exercise based on the actual test that the Dallas Morning News sports department gives applicants for its digital producer jobs. Students will peer-edit their rough drafts with each other in class and then submit the final versions for consideration to be published on the student newspaper website.”
- Facebook Curation by Jonathan Groves of Drury University: “I have my Web students create a Facebook page at the beginning of the semester and curate content around their project idea. They learn about community building and can use Insights to learn about their audience.”
For more, contact the author via on twitter @brannonj or join the Disruptive Journalism Educators Network. Also, learn about the backgrounds and interests of the Tow-Knight Disruptive Educators of 2017.
