Discussion questions for the February / March 2009 issue, along with suggestions for further readings on classroom-newsroom collaborations, newsroom collaborations and guidelines for news site blogs.

Story 1: "Moving the Classroom into the Newsroom" |  Story 2: "Collaborate or Die" |   Story 3: "Share and Share Alike" |  Story 4: "Comments Anonymous"

STORY 1: "Moving the Classroom into the Newsroom: The Anniston Star's creative model for partnership between news outlets and educational institutions." By Chris Roush  

MORE INFO FROM THE STORY:  In the past three years, 14 master's students from the University of Alabama have reported for the paper as Knight Community Journalism Fellows. Ten more arrive in May, Roush reports. The students learn about reporting, multimedia and the interactions between a community and the paper that serves it on their way to earning master's degrees. The 25,000-circulation paper gets stories covered its paid staff wouldn't ordinarily get to. The shift underscores increasing collaboration in beat coverage and storytelling between newsrooms and U.S. universities.

CLASS RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT AND DISCUSSION:

  • Ask students to research other hands-on university/newsroom collaborations, besides the four listed below. Students should describe in a paper how extensive the collaborations are, when and why they were launched, how many students have participated, if they generated revenues for the newspaper or the university, and what each partner has to gain (and lose) from the relationship. Students may focus on one collaboration or multiple. Papers should be about 1,000 words and include informal citations and end notes.

  • Invite in a leader from your state press association, an administrator from your college or department and an editor from at least one campus publication and ask them to engage the class in a discussion on the pros and cons of university/professional newsroom content- and talent-sharing arrangements.


    RELATED COLUMNS, STORIES AND LINKS:



    STORY 2: "Collaborate or Die? Local TV Stations Are Joining Forces to Cover the News," Column by Deborah Potter  

    MORE INFO FROM THE STORY:  Many stations are trying to produce more news with fewer people, Potter says. To survive, they're partnering with former competitors. Local Fox and NBC stations in Philadephia, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Washington are sharing video. And in St. Louis and Denver, Tribune Co. and Local TV LLC/Oak Hill Capital are combining newsrooms but serving separate channels.

    CLASS DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH:

  • Does the public gain or lose when two stations in the same market join forces? Invite in news directors from campus and professional TV stations to discuss the video- and personnel-sharing trends, exploring the pros and cons of such arrangments. Costs are no doubt cut, and the likelihood of mid-air helicopter collisions is reduced, but do the collaborations truly free up reporters to do more specialized or investigative work?

  • Ask students to research previous arrangements in which network TV newsrooms shared video or staff. What were the results, for the bottom line and for news coverage? Students may need to supplement their research with phone calls to newsroom executives. They should type up their notes and be prepared to discuss them in class.

    RELATED COLUMNS AND STORIES:


    STORY 3: "Share and Share Alike: Once considered unthinkable, content-sharing arrangements are proliferating rapidly, often uniting newspapers long seen as bitter rivals. " By Sherry Ricchiardi

    MORE INFO FROM THE STORY: Ricchiardi reports that the loss of advertising dollars to the Internet, coupled with a crippling recession, have "forced dramatic shifts in newsroom mentalities and priorities." Newspapers across America are cutting information-sharing deals with former rivals. Among the collaborators: the Dispatch, the Akron Beacon Journal, Cleveland's Plain Dealer, Toledo's Blade, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Dayton Daily News, Youngstown's Vindicator and Canton's Repository, which jointly sponsored three statewide polls during the 2008 presidential campaign. But not everyone thinks such arrangements are good ideas. Some worry about the erosion of the free marketplace of ideas, and the consequences on the country's democracy. And publishers of papers not in the alliances worry that the information monopoly created by the competition could drive them out of business.

    CLASS RESEARCH, INTERVIEWING AND DISCUSSION:

  • Break the class into small groups and assign each group to do a case study of one of the newspaper collaborations struck within the last two years. Students should do interviews as well as research to determine the details of the deal (what content is permitted for sharing, and what is off limits); how often it's estimated the publications shared content; how well those inside and outside the newsrooms believe the deal is working; and if the arrangements have saved significant money--perhaps keeping the publications afloat. Each student group should type up a memo on its findings and be prepared to present it to the class.

  • Where are U.S. newsrooms headed? Ask students to interview publishers, editors, academics and futurists to make predictions on where print, radio and TV, and online newsrooms are headed in the next year, five years and 10 years. How will they be staffed? How much original content will they be producing? What other shakeups are likely to occur as the economy and revenue models stumble? Papers should be 1,000 to 1,500 words, and include attribution and end notes.

    RELATED STORIES AND COLUMNS:


    STORY 4: "Comments Anonymous: Newspaper Web sites wrestle with offensive blog comments." By Lindsay Gsell

    MORE INFO FROM THE STORY: Gsell reports that news sites must strike a balance when deciding whether to allow those who comment to remain anonymous. Sites want to make it easy for users to participate, and often anonymity can lead to less-inhibited exchanges. But it can also lead to profanity and hateful exchanges. Some sites are now requiring full-name registration as a requirement for users to participate with comments on stories and in blogs. One editor notes that registration acts as a speed bump to those who want to wreak havoc.

    CLASS RESEARCH AND DISCUSSION:

  • How do some of the nation's top news Web sites - CNN.com, MSNBC.com, nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com and npr.org -- handle blog and story comments? Do they require users to register with their sites? Do they require names to be posted with comments? Why or why not? When were their policies put in place? If they require registration, has it cut down on the use of profanity and hate-based comments? Break the class into five groups and have each group research and conduct phone interviews on a different site. Each group should then write their findings in a memo and be prepared to present it to the class.

  • Engage the class in a discussion on the pros and cons of site registration and user name requirements vs. blogger anonymity. What are the students' beliefs, and why? And when --if ever -- should profanity and hateful comments be taken down from a blog--or a blog disabled because of them? (See "Blog Rage" commentary from Jim Brady, below.)

    • RELATED LINKS AND STORIES:

    Teachers' guide written and produced by Chris Harvey, online bureau director at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism and a former managing editor of AJR.

    First item for this issue written March 29, 2009; second and third items written March 30, 2009; final item written March 31.

    Copyright © 2009 University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Permission is granted to freely print, for classroom use, up to 100 copies of the most up-to-date version of this document, as long as the document is not modified.