From Harvard

This week, the Neimann Foundation for Journalism at Harvard hosted the 2007 Christopher J. Georges Conference on College Journalism, an opportunity for editors from seven of the Ivy League's eight daily newspapers plus UMass and Howard to come together for drinks and some world class speakers. Some thoughts from the conference:

If Spec is a predominantly white atmosphere, it's not the only college paper with such a problem. With the exception of the staff from the Howard Hilltop, there was exactly one black editor with just a smattering of Asian American and no Hispanic writers.

George Stephanopoulos, the event's keynote speaker, was dreamy to be sure, but didn't deliver the meatiest of responses in the hour-long question-and-answer period. Among his insights: the campaign system in America works; there is nothing like working in the White House (though he's entered a "permanent place" in his career where he's happy, challenged, and fulfilled); it sucks to freeze on-air; it sucks when you know you didn't ask the follow-up question; it's difficult to find the right level of intensity for interviewing your former colleagues. By far the most interesting response that he gave was about Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton as Lethario. It was obvious that Stephanopoulos was personally hurt by the President's "frivolous [and] irresponsible" act that he said wasted an incredible, irrevocable opportunity to do good coming off of the re-election.

After the event, we partied at the Crimson's offices. Compared to Spec's, they're palatial. Their newsroom bullpen is as big as our entire office, has wood floors (contrasted with our linoleum), a fully stocked vending machine (our distributor comes by once every month or so), and PCs (damn Spec and its inflexibly pro-Apple stance). That's not to mention their hallway, multiple floors, big party room, and printing press.

Day two kicked off with a harrowing speech from Dexter Filkins, Iraq correspondent for the New York Times. Some choice quotes: [about suicide bombers] "They always find the head."; [on the boredom of covering bombings] "Once you see your 150th dead body, your 151st doesn't really affect you."; [on what's changed since the war started} "It used to be 'Hey, there's a party at the Washington Post house. ... [Now] we watch videos. We drink. [Goes on to tell story about how Iraqis were targeting alcohol salesmen for a period.]" He also talked for a while about he was almost killed when a mob or Iraqis began to throw bricks at his car right after a suicide bombing--the getaway almost led to them running over a twelve year-old kid.

Mark Whitaker of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive talked about how the future of news media is going to be driven more by exclusive online content like blogs, podcasts, and videos and that the media have done a good job of moving towards that while Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal said that he didn't know what the future of newspapers would be or how to get there. He talked about some of the things that the WSJ had done--getting stock quotes out of print and putting them online, making newspapers narrower, creating a lucrative subscription-based (instead of free) Web site for high end content--and some broader trends within the business (blogs taking the place of daily newspapers, daily newspapers taking the place of weekly newsmagazines, and weekly newsmagazines struggling to find their niche), but didn't have much to say that was encouraging.

In fact, I came away from the conference feeling sad about where journalism is headed. I spent about ten minutes talking to one of the organizers who was an editor in Detroit until I was about 13 and he said, basically, that while the creme de la creme of national newspapers will continue to thrive and that there will always be a market for hyper-local journalism, the mid-size and regional papers are going to continue to see their papers shrink, coverage worsen, bureaus shutdown, and generally spiral downwards for the foreseeable future. We talked about the Detroit News and Free Press --my hometown papers--as examples of those that have incorporated flashier designs but have been suffering journalistically. All weekend, with some of the brightest young journalists in the country, the talk centered on the declining job market, papers cutting their web widths, the "commodification" of information, and the inability of most papers to afford the resources necessary for quality journalism.

I don't know where I'm headed in terms of my career, and it's very possible that I don't become a journalist. But if this weekend is any indication, the choice may well be made for me.