In my last post I highlighted the Chronicle interview with the student creators of the Onward State blog (Penn State University). Now, Greg Ferenstein at Mashable.com has expanded the story in The Future Newsroom: Lean, Open and Social Media-Savvy . Ferenstein digs deeper into the disparities between the student-run blog and the established campus paper, labeling it “a fascinating mirror of the strife between old and new media.”
In his article he describes the social media entrenched methodologies (e.g. Google Wave and Twitter) that have, so far, garnered success for Onward State and juxtaposes that against the more traditional approaches favored by The Daily Collegian. It’s a fascinating back-and-forth that segues easily into comparisons between the situation at PSU and the general state of affairs in corporate newsrooms. Ferenstein gives us more to mull over with a reference to the blog post It ain’t over by Jeff Jarvis (City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism), that starts out citing statistics about the loss of advertising revenue in the newspaper business and ends with the idea that the industry needs a complete restructuring if it is to survive.
Both Ferenstein and Jarvis offer a good read and lots to think about on a couple of fronts, not the least of which is the example for social media used well.
Read more by Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine.
