Note to “New Media” Morons: It’s About the Message, Not the Medium

A bit of drama flared after Alana Taylor, a journalism student at New York University and self-described “social media maven,” went undercover for PBS’ MediaShift to expose New York University’s stodgy and outdated School of Journalism.

The drama arose not only because Taylor had some pretty harsh things to say about her school, classmates and professor but also because she never disclosed to them that she was going to be an “embedded” reporter for MediaShift as she attended her first day of the class “Reporting Gen Y (a.k.a. Quarterlifers).”

The controversy over Taylor’s “article” (if it can even be called that) reached the PBS Ombudsman, Michael Getler, who had “serious problems” with the fact that Taylor was undercover and never gave her classmates and professor the opportunity to provide feedback on the contents of her “report” (if it can even be called that).

Just what did Taylor say? Let’s look at her “article.”

Right off the bat, Taylor left little doubt that she felt herself different, if not superior, to her classmates:

I am not a typical Quarterlifer. Yes, I have a Facebook account. But I also do so much more. I have a personal blog (which includes videos), I use the popular microblogging service Twitter, I am a blogger and web video correspondent part-time for Mashable (one of the top blogs on social media), and I assist heavily with the social media/marketing department for Classic Media, Inc. (a family programming company). I am deeply involved in social media, new media, technology, “the move to digital” — whatever you want to call it.

Translation: “Look at me everyone! I’m special!”

Taylor is as insightful as she is atypical:

Over the past two years I have been watching as magazines and other publications have taken hard hits economically while trying to migrate online. I have heard Jay Rosen speak about blogs and how important they are for citizen journalism. And in 2008 I made a decision to try to stay ahead of the game by joining the “early adopters” of the digital era.

I know it’s hard for most of us to remember the early days of the digital era in 2008, but that’s the year that whispers about “blogs” and “citizen journalism” were first overheard at coffee shops frequented by revolutionaries.

And 2008 was a bad year for Taylor because she realized that her chosen university didn’t subscribe to her new beliefs:

But, surprisingly, NYU does not offer the kinds of classes I want. It continues to focus its core requirements around learning how to work your way up the traditional journalism ladder.

Surprisingly? Did Taylor decide to go to NYU without looking at the curriculum?

Perhaps the blame for NYU’s “shortcomings” should be pinned on the person who deserves it - Taylor herself. After all, if she had spent less time tweeting, “managing” her blog, singing songs about Twitter and generally serving as a “social media maven,” it’s possible that she would have spent more time investigating the curriculum of the universities she was interested in attending.

And making sure the male-to-female ratios were more in her favor:

The first thing I notice when I walk into the class is that there are 14 girls and two boys. Already NYU is dominated by females, but the journalism department is exceptionally estrogen-infested.

This comment is quite curious, obviously, given that Taylor is (apparently) a woman. Frankly, I fail to see how the observation that NYU’s journalism department is “estrogen-infested” is relevant to Taylor’s article and wonder why she’d want to make such a derogatory comment given that she knew it would be read by her classmates (and will follow her throughout her career).

But enough about NYU’s excessive estrogen. Back to the most important person in the universe - Taylor:

None of the other students in the class have a blog. It comes as a shock to me that the students in a class about ‘how our generation is very much invested in the Internet’ are not actually as involved. Again, perhaps I am an exception to the norm, but I like to think that having a blog is as normal as having a car.

Taylor would like to think that having a blog is as normal as having a car but apparently she doesn’t realize that until favorable financing terms on new blogs are widely available, they’ll never gain the type of adoption that cars have.

Sarcasm aside, Taylor’s “know it all” complex sure makes it difficult for her to comprehend that interests, experience and knowledge differ from person to person. Not everything she knows will be common knowledge and to be sure, there’s clearly quite a bit that she’s ignorant of.

But her ignorance really pales in comparison to her professor’s ignorance:

What surprises me further is when Professor Quigley informs us that people actually get paid to blog. That they make a living off of this. For me this was very much a “duh” moment and I thought that it would be for the rest of the students as well. They should be fully aware at this point that blogging has become a very serious form of journalism. Furthermore, they should be aware that it is the one journalistic venture that requires little or no ladder-climbing. You can start at any age, with almost no experience, and actually get published instead of fetch coffee.

Duh!

Of course, the ease with which one can make a decent living as a blogger is largely myth and although Taylor likes to promote that she’s a part-time “correspondent” for Mashable, having been paid for my guest posts on Mashable, I would be surprised if Taylor could afford to pay my monthly liquor bill (even with the income from her other part-time jobs included).

As for the idea that blogging is “the one journalistic venture that requires little or no ladder-climbing” and that it takes “almost no experience” to “actually get published,” Taylor seems incapable of discerning that there’s a huge difference between earning a decent wage writing for a reputable publication like the New York Times and living below the poverty line blogging.

But back to her professor’s ignorance:

On other subjects, however, I found Quigley lacking in understanding. Again, I don’t expect her to be an expert on the world of social media, but for some reason I am unsettled at the thought of having a teacher who is teaching me about the culture of my generation.

What doesn’t this girl know?

Back in class, Quigley tells us we have to remember to bring in the hard copy of the New York Times every week. I take a deep sigh. Every single journalism class at NYU has required me to bring the bulky newspaper. I don’t understand why they don’t let us access the online version, get our current events news from other outlets, or even use our NYTimes app on the iPhone. Bringing the New York Times pains me because I refuse to believe that it’s the only source for credible news or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and it’s a big waste of trees.

Cry me a river.

If the New York Times is “a big waste of trees,” make no mistake about it: everything Taylor posts on the Internet is a big waste of electrons.

So what to make of Taylor’s pointless rant?

In my opinion, Taylor just doesn’t get it (something she might ironically accuse “old school” journalists of).

The reason? It’s not about the medium - it’s about the message.

Instead of focusing on developing the skills of a good journalist and becoming a good writer, Taylor concerns herself with the mechanics of delivering a message.

The obvious problem with this is that if you don’t know how to develop and craft a message, the medium is irrelevant because you’ll never produce anything worthwhile to distribute through it in the first place.

Taylor may know all there is to know about blogs, Twitter and the latest New Media “flavor of the month” but frankly, an experienced journalist with an ability to investigate and analyze a subject and to write about it competently will fare far better than an inexperienced “social media maven” with no such abilities.

Taylor is obviously the latter.

Her “professional” writing on Mashable encompasses less-than-compellingly written “reports” on the very narrow subject of Web 2.0 (including “reports” that resemble little more than regurgitated press releases) and if her interview with Alexander Kolpin of Berlin Parter is indicative of her skill as a journalist, Taylor might need to reconsider her major.

Coupled with her well-developed yet unjustified superiority complex, I’d say Taylor probably has a brighter future as a citizen journalist than as a professional one.

Fortunately, there are some who still get it. And some were even willing to provide advice Taylor would be wise to heed.

As Trevor Butterworth, a Financial Times contributor, commented:

One of the curious aspects of your article is that it suggests media should be learning from you rather than you learning from the established media. While revolution is all fine and dandy, your focus on what is wrong with old media may prevent you from grasping what is wrong with new media. The lack of deep critical reflection on what you bring to the media is one of the major downsides to those of us who are in the generation ahead of you.

Another commenter pointed out that new media isn’t the final destination:

You are not only a journalism major, but a history major, so you ought to have a appreciation for the genesis, history and development of mass media.

Blogs and social media are not the be-all and end-all of the developing digital world. Perhaps they are not even journalism, but some other kind of animal.

All those big media companies have spent millions upon millions trying to figure out how to monetize a digital product. You can probably count the profitable enterprises on one hand. If the big guys are still puzzled, do you really expect an academic to have the immediate answers?

Meanwhile, the basics will serve you well in both the print and digital world. In the beginning there was the WORD… and spelling, and grammar. And accuracy, too. Learn how to cover a beat, string ideas in a coherent manner, and serve your readers.

Another (who apparently works at a publishing company) observed that many Gen Y’ers like Taylor don’t have the basics down:

Alana: You are right about the future of journalism being online. But you are wrong about traditional media.

I hire people from your generation who are very tech savvy. They’re hard pressed to craft a grammatically correct sentence, which most of our readers want to read in the print edition — the medium they still turn to the most.

Few of these tech-savvy Gen Y’ers also have a grounding in ethics, reporting techniques and narrative writing skills.

Our profession must embrace the digital age but can’t ignore its traditions and how it has evolved over time.

One reminded Taylor that a professor’s job isn’t necessarily to teach students specific tools but to help them use their brains more effectively:

Been there, done that: Was young and thought I knew it all, I knew better than the professor. I was convinced that what I was learning in class would be useless. Would never get me a job. No practical, real skills for the real world.

Now I am the professor.

Guess what: School, the best kind of school, doesn’t teach you skills. It teaches you how to think. I didn’t get that until much later, when I was out of school and got that job.

School is like a gym for your brain. You lift weights at the gym, though you’ll never lift weights in real life. Why? To be strong.

Your professor can teach you to press this and that button and use twitter. Yes, I do that in my classes, too…

But guess what: by the time you graduate, the button would’ve moved somewhere else, by the time you’re 40, twitter will be history.

So as a prof, I ask myself: What can I give you that can stay with you and be useful 10-20 years later?

Whereas students think: What can I learn that will be useful to me next week?

You admit your teacher is smart. You are disappointed because you expect her to teach you what you already know. You are so busy thinking that you know better than her that your mind won’t absorb anything else.

Let that go, see if she can teach you something new after all. I bet she can.

Students expect their teachers to know it all and feed it to them. But you learn more when you learn together, because that will teach you how to learn - one of those skills that will be useful when you’re 40.

So the first-time, messy, disorganized, all over the place courses are actually the best - you get to see and experience the pains of learning, of creating new knowledge.

An NYU alumnus chimed in:

Humility and curiosity are great qualities when you’re a student. Your post doesn’t seem to display much of either. I don’t know if it’s intentional, but you come across as thinking that you’re more important than the institution and teachers around you. You balk at reading a print copy of the New York Times, where (unlike the online edition) almost every turn of the page can enhance your education and enlighten you on subjects you never dreamed about. And you seem to think all bloggers are journalists. They are not because many of them aren’t subjected to journalistic standards. They don’t check facts and, frankly, a lot of them don’t write very well. Their posts are read with skepticism rather than trust.

A good communicator has to be a well-rounded, well-educated, curious person regardless of the medium. People who think they already know it all at a young age will never get there. I should know. During my career, I’ve had to fire or otherwise reject too many people who had more hubris than real skills.

And finally, “Ace” summed it up best:

Often times, journalism students think “old thinking” equals actually knowing how to report and write in some coherent manner. There is a bad new age idea out there that it’s OK to write however you want and do “journalism” without reporting.

But in the end, content is king, no matter how you present it. And the internet does not change that.

Of course, some disagree with this and think Taylor proved just how powerful the blogosphere is with her article despite the fact that it was the audience of stodgy old PBS that provided Taylor’s naivety the exposure it received.

This aside, to those who think Taylor “gets it,” I will simply repeat the advice of “Colleen”:

Quick, someone hire this girl while she knows everything!

Fortunately, I’m sure it won’t take much to make Taylor an offer she can’t refuse. Unfortunately, she won’t make you coffee, you’ll have to deal with her intimidating intelligence and if you have too much estrogen in your office, watch out.