Michigan Press Association Convention

I love these nerds.

This weekend, I attended the Michigan Press Association Convention in Grand Rapids, and I learned so much about journalism in the state, and the future of print media.
The first session I attended was on social media selling, presented by Amie Stein. It was targeted toward ad salespeople, but I still found it to be very useful. They discussed the importance of tracking keywords, which I’ll be implementing soon at the Western Herald. I already track hashtags there (#wmu and #kalamazoo, for instance) but I could be reaching out to more people by utilizing keyword tracking with a program like Sprout Social.
I was also pleased to find out that stalking people online is a useful skill for salespeople, since I do it often. Stein said that she uses Linkedin and Facebook to find things she has in common with prospective customers, and comes into meetings armed with that information. While I don’t attend sales meetings, I will be interviewing in the future, and the idea is similar – if I can find something I have in common with an interviewer prior to meeting them, it might help.
“You’re not going to get to the New York Times by showing them stories you wrote about the fire last night.” said Ron French. Enterprising reporting in the 24-hour news cycle was the second session I attended, which was a panel discussion with editors from Bridge Magazine, Detroit Today, and MLive. They discussed the ways their organizations approach enterprise journalism, and how they find time to rise up from day to day news and work on bigger, feature stories. This was hugely useful for me – I love those bigger stories, but I can’t let them take away from my work as an editor. My recent series on college affordability and accessibility (parts 1 and 3 are available here, I’ll see if I can get someone to put part 2 online today.) was exciting to work on, and I hope that I’ll have the chance to do more of those types of articles in the future.
They also discussed the collaborative nature that some of their work has taken on, specifically about the Detroit bankruptcy, and how Detroit Today on WDET has functioned as a center for in-depth information about the bankruptcy, and as an archive of the process.
Vaccination was another major article discussed, as MLive released their feature about low vaccination rates effect public health just before the measles outbreak hit.
“It’s important to be different so you’re noticed.” Joe Grimm said. I found the last session of the day to be the most valuable. Grimm is a professor at Michigan State University, formerly of the Free Press. He spoke about personal branding, mashups, and love. His premise was this: there are a lot of journalists out there, so you’ve got to have something that sets you apart from the rest of them. Most of us have something else that we also love, and it’s important to bring that out, make a mashup of them, and sell that unique combination. He suggested learning another language, or becoming good at math, and said that someone who spoke Arabic, or was fantastic at analyzing data, would stand out.
He said that as a recruiter at the Detroit Free Press, his brand was about being nice, in order to compete with a recruiter at the Chicago Tribune who was mean.”You have to communicate your brand in the way you act.”
He also pointed out that with the shift of newspapers to online content, “We’re standing at the beginning of the biggest change in journalism in 700 years.” For Grimm, the future is bright, and the possibilities of journalism in the internet age are endless.
One story that was mentioned over and over was the Free Press story about James Robertson, who walks 21 miles to work every day. I was slightly confused about this – yes, it was a great article, and it did inspire a lot of people to help Robertson, but I feel like this distracts from real social issues. Robertson works a full time job that pays significantly above minimum wage, yet he cannot afford a car, and lives in a city lacking in public transportation. Countless other people are in similar situations, but rather than starting a discussion about the public transportation cuts in Detroit, or the car-centrism of our cities, or the fact that it’s very hard to live in America if you’re working class, people have focused solely on this man. They raised a large sum of money for him, which is great, but it doesn’t further the conversation on economic inequality or labor in America.
I didn’t have the chance to ask this question at MPA, but I want to know what my fellow journalists think – do you believe that journalists have a responsibility to further the conversation on social issues? Do you think the story about Robertson diverted the focus of the public from real issues of economic inequality, or do you think attention was diverted only from the Kardashians?