E-Media Tidbits

maegancarberry.com This journalist and blogger is about to become a regular on E&P's site.

Last week, Barbara Iverson wrote about research showing how newsrooms are alienating younger journalists. Yesterday, Editor & Publisher Online announced a new column, --31--, by Maegan Carberry and other contributors, which will explore "how younger journalists can shape the future of news and storytelling."

Carberry notes: "It seems fitting to address the terms of engagement under which members of my generation experience information consumption. ...We are coming to professional and personal fruition with the mentality that news is a collective conversation on multimedia platforms, not just what I like to call Brussel Sprouts Journalism, where an editor at a desk serves up content they think we should read -- even if we don't want it."

I was encouraged to read that this column will allow "others to join in ...[via] blog-like comments." For years I've thought that a glaring weakness of E&P's site is its lack of comment functionality -- as well as the near-total absence of live hyperlinks in its stories.

According to E&P editor Greg Mitchell, here's what they mean by blog-like comments: "For now, people can send comments [by e-mail] and we will post [them] at end of [Carberry's] column or in separate piece. However, this is interim, as we are launching two blogs, at least, just after Labor Day. [Carberry] will be a presence there, where the usual type of blog commenting will go on. ...Commenting will be available at our blogs but nowhere else until re-design. We do have a comment capability at E&P's podcast site but few have used it."

Mitchell continued: "[E&P has] never had any sort of option of doing comments. Our site has not been redesigned for about five years so we are adding things piecemeal for now. We would have liked comments long ago."

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Regarding E&P's dearth of links, Mitchell explained: "We have done, and do, some hyperlinking but it is extremely cumbersome with our current technology and we lost a full online editor position a few months ago. ...We will be doing more hyperlinking in future and then much more when technology changes."

I am sympathetic to keeping an online operation going on limited resources and staff. That said, for several years it's been difficult for any media-related site to appear relevant without offering direct commenting. Also, hyperlinks in online body text have been the norm for about a decade. Left for too long, outdated online publishing technology can eventually erode even an established media brand. (And I say that being fully aware of Poynter Online's ongoing issues with its own site technology.)

Finally, I was bit puzzled by the choice of title, --31--. It's obviously a sideways reference to the old "--30--" marks used to indicate the end of copy in pre-computer days. However, I haven't seen that mark used anywhere in many years. How will this title translate to the 20-something crowd?

To this point, Carberry responded: "I picked the name --31-- to pay respect to the tremendous success of the traditional newspaper industry. If people don't get the reference immediately, I hope they'll be interested to discover a tidbit of journalism history. It's also obviously a reference to the age group I'm writing to and the thing that comes after the 'end,' implying that it's not really over."

Hmmm... Honestly, that title sure sounds like a tough sell to me. Carberry's rationale for it makes me wonder whether E&P's real goal for this column might be more about helping older journalists understand younger journalists, while reassuring people that historic journalistic practices remain relevant. If so, that's not necessarily a bad goal. We'll see how it works out.

In any case, I wish E&P much luck with this column -- and with their CMS upgrade and site redesign.

(Thanks to Poynter's Julie Moos for the tip.)