When Heritage Newspapers announced plans to launch what amounts to a news incubator in a few months, I was leery that what came out of the experiment may be a flop of Patch-like proportions.

From their article on the subject:

Our goal is to teach the community to gather and report news on a variety of platforms, from creating video and podcasts to photo slideshows and sound slideshows to timelines, locator maps, info graphics, live tweeting, creating Storified compilations and databases, and become collaborators with Heritage.com, bringing the outside in and creating a transparent community newsroom.

A noble cause, but I think the journalism world can look to AOL’s Patch venture for why a lot of times hyper-local content doesn’t work. It’s not that important, not actually that local and most importantly not that interesting. I spent five minutes browsing some Michigan Patch posts and found the following stories I can’t imagine more than 10 people care about:

- a 1,168-word “Tribute To Twinkies”

- a crime blotter that leads with a stolen bike helmet

- a blog simply entitled Gossip!

That said, I think the Heritage Newspapers project could address the problem of untrained community journalists. I’ve left “community” articles with grammatical hangovers and headaches from shaky cell phone video, so as a consumer I appreciate any attempts to clean it up.

But I think the issue is going to be what kind of talent pool the incubator has to work with. Heritage has established themselves in a college town, which may be good. Eastern Michigan University offers a journalism major, though it’s not accredited. That probably menas students are looking for opportunities to establish a good portfolio. Heritage also mentions that they want to recruit high school students, which sounds like a great idea.

But I have a different prediction for who will end up being interested: community activists.

I’ve sat through enough public comment sessions in state and local government to know that there are a lot of people that care deeply about issues but at the end of the day just aren’t informed on them. If Heritage is going to help them translate the half they do understand into a video or slideshow package and then distribute it as straight news, it’s a problem.

I think the challenge on this front will be aligning people’s interests and passions with journalistic and ethical standards. Because when it changes from “I want to cover this because these city council changes are bullshit and people ought to know about it” to “I’m covering this for Heritage Newspapers, let’s get both sides,” it’s work. Which is why newspapers have traditionally paid reporters. And hey, as a paid journalist I’m all for continuing that tradition.

But I’m also interested to see what (and who) comes out of this new venture in community journalism.

Note: I’m not clear on whether this content will have its own site or be featured on the websites of Heritage Newspapers. Also note:  I browse many of the state’s papers every day, and think Heritage does a great job with local coverage. 

The political reporters in my newsroom -- I'm center-right (www.mirsnews.com).

I was apparently selected to participate in the 2011 National Survey of Journalism & Communication Graduates through the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Georgia. I bring this up not because I’m bragging (selection was random) but because the survey made me think a lot about the successes and pitfalls of my education.

I’ve said a couple times in my time since graduation that if I could do it over again, I’d pick a field to be an expert in and then target writing specifically to that area. If I’d discovered my passion for religious studies earlier, for instance, I could have majored in it and more accurately aim to be the next Lisa Miller. I also never explored fields like science, which I’ve always loved, because I knew I didn’t want to be stuck in a lab. But writing about what goes on in labs is a different story.

So at the end of the survey, it asked for me to give advice to future journalism students, and I wanted to do something that got at that core “why am I here?” angle. The results:

“Don’t go into journalism because you like to write. That helps, but I’ve found almost every other aspect of my job to be more important. If you have a passion for the beat you’re covering, a connection with your sources, an eye on your deadline, a hard-on for research, a healthy respect for ‘due diligence’ and a slightly inflated sense of justice, you might be in the right place.”

If I’d heard those words my freshman year at Michigan State University, I definitely wouldn’t have been swayed, because I’m stubborn, goal driven and confident in everything I pursue. But hey, maybe they’ll work as a sorting hat for somebody else.

Being a reporter, I’m also human (despite what some like to think). That means that every once in a while, I make a mistake. It sucks every time, but there’s different ways to fix it.

In my opinion the news organizations that fix mistakes in a transparent way are the most adept. Newspapers have been running a “corrections” section forever, but on the web that’s not really good enough. Newspapers are on shaky enough ground (right, so you’re supposed to have the paper from yesterday or the day before laying around, then cross-reference it with the corrected part, figure out which paragraph it effects and then wrap your mind around what that means. Have fun trying to get those 8 minutes of your life back.)

Thanks to jollyUK for licensing this under Creative Commons on Flickr.

When it comes to the online world, I’m a big fan of Slate‘s corrections policy. They generally reference a mistake at the bottom story in an editor’s note type of thing, and then link you back to the corrected sentence. I do web work. I know that whole anchor/flag in the text concept is annoying. But as a reader, it’s very nice to not have to figure out where the mistake originally appeared.

The second thing they do right is aggregate their mistakes in one place. In case you need to quickly reference a correction, it’s there. If you’re on the offended/misquoted end, you can furiously refresh your browser on that page until it tells you what’s changed where.

At my news organization, we’ve struggled a little bit with that sort of consistency. One editor pointed out a couple weeks ago that sometimes we run a correction but don’t correct the actual story. We also have what I think is an important line between what we announce as a correction and what we don’t. For instance, if I’m scrolling through a published story and realize a typo’s gotten though, I fix it on the back end and don’t do anything else. It’s different if I get a call from someone pointing out my math is wrong — that warrants an ASAP correction along with a correction run in the next edition.

Sometimes when people are mad about small things (“I wouldn’t quite describe that advocacy organization as progressive like you did in your story…”) it makes the most sense to either stand by your words or, if they have concrete evidence to the contrary, just change it in the story. For me, this applies most often to things that don’t at all change the meaning of a story.

I think what’s really bad is when news organizations correct something essential without mentioning it. It’s very frustrating to send someone an article and then find out that what’s up at that link now is different from what you’d forwarded them. We do a good job avoiding that kind of frustrating run-around.

In any case, I’m proud to say I haven’t had to correct anything in a month or so. I’m not sure if it’s the “bad things happen in threes” logic or what, but it seems to come and go in waves.

I think my biggest personal gaffe was quoting Michigan’s Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development as saying one of this collegue’s ideas was “immature” instead of “premature.” This was how it was in my notes and everything, but I should have realized it was extremely out of character as I was typing things up. I just misheard. Every once in a while they’ll still tease me about it at Ag Commission meetings, but I try to keep it and all mistakes in a certain perspective; they’re OK if you put the right kind of band-aid on them.

I’ve been bitching for a couple years about how Facebook was more burden than tool. Today, I broke off our five-year relationship.

In 2006, I got my college acceptance letter and my friend Aislinn, a year older than me, was geeked. “Now you can sign up for Facebook!” she told me, explaining that it was a college-only club for cool kids. I didn’t really know what she was saying, but figured she probably knew what she was talking about. She set up my profile, using my senior picture as a profile photo.

In 2007, I started at Michigan State University (MSU). Facebook was great, because I could keep in touch will all of my Stoney Creek High School friends while making new connections at MSU. This was also probably my greatest period of Facebook use. I was constantly online during classes, checking if the cute dude that sat by me were single or looking at other people’s colleges through pictures. I remember joking with friends that I was “addicted” and browsing for probably more than an hour every day. I changed my profile picture to reflect my newfound (awesome) home.

In 2008 is when I started experiencing the first downside of Facebook, because people would post pictures of me at parties. “I’m going to need a job eventually,” I thought, deleting photos that looked scandalous. The sad thing was that in a lot of photos, I wasn’t actually drinking. I’d have a red cup at an residence hall event or something and think it looked suspicious enough to take down. But also in some I was drinking. So there.

In the summer of 2008, my favorite Facebook use occurred. I don’t remember why or how, but my best friends from college and I started a “thread” message titled Chimp Mauling. Facebook has mysteriously deleted this chat, but it’s continued every summer since (pictured). When I think of this group of friends, I think of Chimp Mauling and the hilarious messages that brightened my days when we were apart all summer.

In 2009, tides were a’changin’. I realized I liked the pictures more than anything else. I wasn’t really using Facebook to keep in touch with people — I was using it to avoid keeping in touch with people. I’d look at their pictures and think “Oh cool, they’re doing great.” That eliminates the important step of actually talking to old friends, and unfortunately I think I lost quite a few while thinking I was keeping in touch with a few clicks. I was also put off by the influx of non-college people joining what had once been at least a little exclusive. While it was nice to keep in touch with my friends, there were family members gossiping about what my friends and I were up to and I was faced with some awkward “I really didn’t want to know that about my middle-school cousin” dilemmas. I changed my profile picture to a non-current (although hilarious) one and backed off checking it every day. In other words, I made it a little less personal.

In 2010, it got even less personal. I un-joined as many groups as I could, mainly keeping ones that had only people I still kept in touch with in them. My house did have a page that was semi-useful for announcing parties and collecting utility money, but that’s pretty much where the usefulness ended. Also, I’d been a member of Twitter since 2008, and I found myself liking that a lot more. There were less whiners on there, because it was less tolerated. I remember somebody posting something stupid about how sad they were and my boyfriend complaining. “That’s not what Twitter’s for, take it to Facebook,” he said. I peeled back my profile even more and went on the site in general about once a week.

And now, on Sept. 22, 2011, I’m calling it quits. I’ve got 791 friends. I’ve got messages I love going back to. But I’ve got photos I downloaded, and I’m going forward armed with people I call and text every day. With real live phone numbers. And I’ve got real live friends. I’m tired of feeling obligated to go on Facebook (to un-add myself to groups people have put me in, un-tag myself from ugly photos, un-post embarrassing things on my wall, and un-invite myself to events from people I haven’t seen in three years.) I’m going to spend some time getting out and doing things. I knew it was over when I didn’t dislike the new updates. In fact, I didn’t have any feelings about #f8. I didn’t give a shit, which I took as a sign that our time together was at a natural end. I loved you once, Facebook. But good night (and good luck).

The Journalism degree is under attack. The Daily Beast ranked the number one most useless degree. The University of Colorado closed its Journalism school this year. Huffington Post Columnist Richard Sine compares graduate journalism degrees to majoring in blacksmithing or bloodletting.

For me, journalism was the right thing to do, and I landed a job right out of college. But that comes with a disclaimer: I studied a lot of other areas, too. I think a journalism degree alone would have been too easy for me. Even with my extra studies, it took editing a publication and holding three journalism-related jobs to keep me busy by my senior year. Also, in my particular situation, money wasn’t a concern. My jobs paid for all of my housing and living expenses, and a mix between a fund my grandparents had set up for me and scholarships covered school.

The arguments of those calling the journalism degree useless are valid on a systemic level. There aren’t a lot of jobs. There are too many graduates. And, outside of a situation like mine, the degree can be a huge debt.

But here’s my argument: these conditions have combined to make journalism a meritocracy.

The industry has come a long way from the days when, as Jack Shafer pointed out in a recent Slate column, journalists had to be from an Ivy to get a job. Are there still benefits to being well connected? Of course (ahem, Meghan McCain’s Newsweek Internship). But the best way to get a journalism degree these days is to work your ass off. I like that. And that’s what the journalism program at Michigan State University pushed on me. It wasn’t “go through our program and you’re good,” it was “get some internships under your belt and clips in your portfolio and you’re on solid footing.”

Like it or not, we’re in a day and age where you can pay for a top-slot internship. But you can’t pay for a job. Times are tough, and media organizations seek talented reporters, or people whose skills can be cultivated at their organization. In this economy, they can’t afford to hire somebody that’s not already on top of their game.

So it’s probably easier to get a job with an engineering degree, regardless of your GPA, any extracurricular experience or how hard you worked in college. Great. With journalism, as in any tight employment market, you’ve got to work harder or innovate. That doesn’t mean it’s unattainable. And in my opinion, that doesn’t mean the degree itself is useless.

I wouldn’t argue with anybody who said getting a journalism degree was easy. It was. I won’t argue with anybody who said that my degree alone isn’t what landed me a job. It wasn’t. But those who say a journalism degree necessarily equates to a lifetime of poverty and unemployment are wrong.

This is a time of innovation and transition of traditional newspaper models. It’s a time to experiment with paywalls and hyperlocalism and online platforms. It’s a time to cut down on staff, maybe. But it isn’t a time to give up on teaching people basic journalistic principles.