AMES, Iowa -- Michael Bugeja has heard the predictions about the death of print journalism. And he's read stories suggesting that traditional reporting skills may not translate well to today's digital newsroom.
So Bugeja, director and professor in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, is going to get a first-hand look at where journalism and reporting are headed. He and Dennis Chamberlin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and assistant professor in the Greenlee School, will be returning to the newsroom next week at The Des Moines Register.
Starting on Sunday, Nov. 8, through Thursday, Nov. 12, Bugeja and Chamberlin will serve as a reporter and photographer respectively for The Register to see if their skill sets are still viable in the digital newsroom. They plan to do an enterprise piece or series on "The New Poverty," or how the current recession is impacting white as well as blue collar workers and senior employees as well as new.
"I'm planning to be on-call 24 hours-a-day, just like any other reporter would be on-call," said Bugeja, author of the award-winning book, "Living Ethics Across Media Platforms" (Oxford University Press, 2008). "I didn't think it would be a very valid experiment if I told Randy Brubaker (managing editor, The Des Moines Register) that I was going to be there from 8 to 5 each day. Reporters don't live that way.
"What Dennis and I are going to do that is a little different is we're not only going to see if we can handle the technology and see if it's viable, we're also going to use Watergate-era street reporting," he continued. "So in other words, we're not going to spend a lot of time on Google or databases looking for sources. We're just going to go to the shelters, to the foreclosures, to the pawn shops where we might find the new poverty and find the person there who thought it was serendipitous that we arrived so we can speak to that person. That's the kind of instinct that reporters used to have."
Bugeja emphasizes that he and Chamberlin are not undertaking this experiment in order to critique The Register. They are simply seeking to work in a contemporary newsroom as an educational experience.
"We are immensely grateful for the opportunity to work for a week at The Register. And we hope in return for this graciousness that we can produce an enterprise package that the Des Moines Register can be proud to print," said Bugeja, who was a reporter, correspondent and bureau manager for United Press International in the 1970s.
He has already begun to blog about his experience at: http://myregisterexperience.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/street-reporting-can-it-work-in-the-digital-newsroom/. The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) will host the blog for a national audience. Bugeja will also be "tweeting" about the experience on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/Michael_Bugeja.
And that's all part of the experiment.
"We'll use all the new technologies from Twitter to blogging, and cell phones and laptops of course," Bugeja said. "And the reason is that we don't want to appear curmudgeonly."
Bugeja and Chamberlin plan to report back to other Greenlee School faculty on their field experience. And there may be more in the future.
"If I can model the behavior of returning to the newsroom,
perhaps other professors might follow to get a better grip on
where our industry is headed," he said. "I also hope
to do this at the Meredith Corp., and perhaps at one of the Des
Moines television stations, an advertising agency and a PR
agency."
