My Kindle DX and newspapers

The Los Angeles Times is not necessarily my favorite daily newspaper –although I’ve not lived in the Bay Area for 12 years I still enjoy reading the San Jose Mercury News whenever I can get my hands on it– but it clearly is the paper I read in the most varied ways.

Ways I read the Times, in my order of preference, include:

1. In print
2. Through the Times web site
3. Through Twitter on my iPhone (LA Times feeds)
4. Through my Kindle DX
5. Through third-party RSS links (from blogs) on my computer
6. Through Twitter on my iPhone (third-party Tweets with links)
7. Through RSS links from the LA Times
8. Through my iPhone app for the LA Times (sorry, this was too cludgey and I’ve deleted the app from my iPhone. So scratch this one. What a terrible interface.)

On any given day I’m likely to read a Times article via five or more of these sources.

My most recent pathway to reading the the Times is with my new Kindle DX. Reading it this way most decidedly is an acquired taste, one that I’m still working on.

I’ve read a lot about e-book readers being the next big thing for newspapers and have wanted to try it. Amazon.com sells Kindle and with no brick and morter stores to visit to test the Kindle, you pretty much have to buy one on faith. And that takes a lot of faith because the DX, the only version that handles newspapers, sells for close to $500. (Amazon did not even answer my query about whether there was such a thing as an educational discount or whether I could get a reviewer’s discount.)

While I like LISTENING to books –my iPod/iPhone gets a lot of use and I currently carry almost 100 books on it– I can’t really say I’m an avid book reader. I DO read novels and non-fiction books from time to time and do a lot of newspaper and blog reading, to say nothing of textbooks because of my teaching job. I just don’t READ enough books to justify even the lower-end Kindle that sells for around $300.

I like to listen to books while walking, which I do a lot, and highly recommend Audible.com. I’ve been a subscriber for years and can download two unabridged books a month from its humongous and ever-growing library for less than the cost of one newly released printed book. (Hey, Audible, if you are listening, I would willingly accept the gift of a free book for that unsolicited but heart-felt plug.)

Lately, though, I’ve found the Kindle book reader app for my iPhone and that has increased my love of book reading, especially with favorite authors who don’t seem to condone their books being distributed in mp3 format. Yes, Clive Cussler and Tom Clancey, I’m talking about you! I’m currently devouring Cussler’s Oregon series since only two seem to be available in iPod/iPhone listening format.

I bought the Kindle DX because my job includes reading lots of course outline documents. The DX screen is big enough to read these documents as PDFs, which are easily uploaded to the Kindle. Carrying the 1/3-inch thick device around is far superior than carrying 3-inch to 5-inch stacks of course outlines that my job as campus Curriculum Chair requires. That made it worth the purchase price.

My verdicts so far:

* Reading books on the Kindle DX is okay, but quite frankly, the touch screen navagation of my iPhone makes that experince far more satisfying. I even prefer the limited iPhone experience (forget texts that require illustrations) to reading a printed book.

* Reading newspapers on the Kindle DX is interesting, but ridiculous. Forgive me, but presentation DOES count and the presentation on a Kindle leaves a lot to be desired. More below, but I cannot for the life of me understand why Kindle limits newspaper readership to the high-end unit. With some minor tweaks in the interface, my iPhone would be a much more convenient way and I don’t see why it can’t be done. The navigation system of the Kindle is cludgey compared to the touch screen iPhone and if the rumored Apple iTablet ever comes out and gets into the newspaper game Kindle will have a competitor.

* Reading short PDF documents on the Kindle DX is a godsend. But the built-in search function combined with the ridiculous chicket keyboard makes including pdf reference books, such as my college catalog, which I have to refer to almost daily, a lousy choice. Again, the iPhone approach to touchscreen navigation and virtual keyboard is going to blow Kindle out of the water.

Let me talk for a minute about the newspaper reading experience on the Kindle DX, which some of my journalism teacher colleagues have asked about.

In short, you subscribe to a text-only version of a newspaper. (Again, why the cheaper versions or iPhone app can’t handle that is unclear.) The DX has a built-in wireless connection to your personal Kindle account and the paper is delivered automatically within minutes of turning on the unit in the morning. The previous day’s paper is moved to archives. That’s cool. But unless you are a hard core newspaper reader the appeal drops off after there.

You access your files/newspaper by scrolling down the home menu with a five-way joy stick key that can give your thumb a blister. And it takes a while to become comfortable with what you can and cannot do with the the joy stick.

When you select the newspaper you want to read it defaults to opening up the text of the first story, presumably the lead story of page one. You use “Next Page” and “Previous Page” buttons on the right side of the Kindle to page through the story. Because you have some control over the size of text a story can take more or less pages to display. (And given the Times’ penchant to make any story long, count on most stories taking multiple pages, even at smallest font size.)

There is a slight delay in the pages changing on the screen after clicking the button and the button requires a pretty good push to activate, but you get used to that…unless of course you’ve gotten use to the easy touch screen swipe on your iPhone. You learn to click the button before you get to the bottom of the page so as to keep the interference with the reading flow to a minimum.

You use the joy stick to linearly page through the stories one at a time. But because presentation isn’t an issue with Kindle, you have no way in this mode of knowing where you are in the list of available stories and what is coming up. With the printed version or online version you can scan for the story that interests you and jump directly to it; you can read which stories you want in the order you want. That is not the consideration here.

There IS hope, though. Move the cursor to the bottom of the page with your joy stick and you can select a “View Sections” option that lists the major sections of the paper (Front Page, California, The Nation, The World, Business, Sports, Opinion, etc.).

You can choose one of those and start your linear oddessy just in the section you want.

The Section View also tells you how many stories are in the section. You can even move the cursor to number next to the section name. Click on the number and your Section View changes from a list of sections to an RSS view of the stories in that section: headline and first few lines of the story. Ahhh, now you are getting somewhere. You can now choose which story you want to read without having to wade through each story. Simply move the cursor to the headline and click on it to get the full story.

But did I mention that presentation matters? There are no photographs with the stories. The headlines are barebones and there are no drop heads or pull quotes to entice you into a story. Roundups and letters to the editor are difficult to read because there is not even an extra line of space between each item and the subheads are indistinguishable from body text.

When I look at how I select stories to read from the print edition of the newspaper I rely heavily on those drop heads and pull quotes and photos to give me more information about whether I’d be interested in the story. No so luck with the barebones approach. And that barebones headline may not be very descriptive. There does not appear to be any effort on the Times’ part to rewrite the headlines with the Kindle interface in mind. A clever five word headline followed up with a more descriptive drop head –to say nothing of the interesting photo– works fine in print and even on the web. But that same five word headline as the ONLY information I have about the story does not. True, in the RSS view I have the first few lines of the story, but use an anecdotal lead, which the Times does a lot, and you have no idea what the story is about.

Don’t buy the Kindle DX to read newspapers or even books. If you can find another reason like I did, then think about it. If Kindle tweaks its interface, if photos and additional subhead information can be included it might someday be good. Last ngiht, for instance, I had time to kill waiting for my daughter’s beach party to end, so I plopped my butt into a chair at a Starbucks and enjoyed reading the SJ Mercury and a few Times stories had not already read earlier in the day. It was hgih tech, it was cool.

Now, I’ve left out a lot. The screen IS easy to read. Maybe not as easy as my iPhone, but the iPaper platform works for me. It is not backlit, so you still need a well-lit environment. But you could read this thing on the beach (if you weren’t worried about the sand getting in it and gummying it up). It has a built-in dictionary; move the cursor to any word, click on it and the definition appears at the bottom of the screen. And the sucker is supposed to be able to handle something like 3,500 books (because they are all text-only with no graphics), not that you’d ever want to do that. Without a better navigation system, I don’t see it being a viable option for textbooks, too bad.

To put documents on your Kindle, those you don’t buy for greatly reduced prices from Amazon, is really easy. Either attach your Kindle to your computer via cable or email the document to your special Kindle account and wait for it to be delivered wirelessly.

There is a text-to-speech function I haven’t tried, but the thought of uploading a light background music mp3 file sounds like something I may try.

Despite my mostly negative comments above, I like my Kindle and look forward to its interface being upgraded to be more useful. Unfortunately, without the touchscreen archtecture built in, though, I’d probably have to actually buy a future generation version to take advantage of a fully pleasurable-to-use unit. (Apple or Kindle, keep me in mind as a reviewer of new versions; I think this technology has potential and will accept my current role as an unfortunate early adopter.)

Abrams grills Ashcroft, Gonzales

Chief Legal Correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC Dan Abrams attempted to put fire to feet of former attorneys-general John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales April 28 in the third installment of the 2009 public lecture series sponsored by the American Jewish University at Universal City’s Gibson Amphitheater.

Ashcroft smouldered throughout the evening, but Gonzales just sat there, often with a sheepish grin on his face.

What newspapers can do to help journalism educators

By Rich Cameron
Cerritos College
Cal-JEC chair

What can California’s newspaper publishers do for journalism education at the high school, community college and university levels?

That’s one of the questions I will have to try to answer in a 10- to 15-minute presentation I will be making to long-time publishers next December when I report on the state of journalism education in the state of California. As chair of the California Journalism Education Coalition I lead a group that is trying to assess that topic for what we hope will be a bi-annual report. I’m already nervous.

As I woke up under the hot streams of my morning shower this morning –that shower time is some of my most creative thinking time– I pondered possible answers to the question of how they could help. Perhaps in the next six months of research that will go into the report we’ll ferret out specific needs, but I found one general answer this morning: Just talk to us.

Cal-JEC meeting notes

I played host today to the quarterly meeting of the California Journalism Education Coalition board. Cal-JEC is that umbrella group that brings together representatives of the main high school, community college, university, other educational and industry groups interested in California journalism education.

Probably the biggest topic discussed over the day was a long-term project to develop regular “State of Journalism Education” reports for industry leaders. The group is working on a report that would cover the high school, community college and university levels and which would be delivered to the California Press Association next December. The hope is that there will be status reports every other year.

Learning WordPress

Courtesy of Leezel Tanglao (See more photos)

About 20 journalists, journalism teachers and journalism students  learned the basics of WordPress blogging software today at workshop held at and co-sponsored by the Cerritos College journalism program and the Los Angeles Chapter of the Asian American Journalism Association.

A second, more advanced workshop will be held at Santa Monica College next Saturday.

Telling the story in 150 characters

Regular readers of my comments or my blogs may have deduced that I have a hard time being brief. When I’ve got something to say I’ve got lots I want to say.

Well, learning social networking using Facebook has me learning how to share the short story, too.

One of Facebook’s main features is the “what are you doing now” feature where you are encouraged to tell your “friends” what you are doing now.

A lot of my friends write a lot of unintelligible dribble. Yuck. Even the ones who write an intelligible message, such as “Rich is sad,” don’t tell you WHY they are sad. If I care about my friends, I want to know.

Being journalistically minded I at least want to put what I am doing into some kind of context so my friends, if they care, can understand what I am saying. I try to convey a short news story about myself.

The challenge is, though, is that you have only about 150 characters of space with that “what are you doing now” tool. I’m finding it good practice for me to say what I want to say more concisely.

Brazile and Murphy entertain, Dowd asleep at public lecture series

(Feb. 24, 2009) — Donna Brazile was delightfully folksy, Mike Murphy was amusingly arrogant, and Maureen Dowd was disappointingly detatched as the three lumanaries squared off in a panel discussion on timely political issues Monday night at the opening salvo of the American Jewish University’s 2009 speaker series.

Editors Day at Cerritos College

Thirty-three students from seven community colleges attended the Editors Day held at Cerritos College Feb. 7, 2009.

The purpose of the event was to give editors of student publications a chance to network and share common problems and seek common solutions. The format for the day was simple:

The students split up to assure diversity at each of seven tables and spent the first hour just talking about their programs. Then they were given a bit more direction and asked to prepare four lists:

• 3 Biggest problems at their publications
• 3 Things about their advisers (no names allowed and because of diversity at each table no advisers singled out)
• 3 Ways their publications could/should cover the recession
• 3 Things about being on newspaper staff

The topics were purposely a bit vague to give students widest latitude in answering them.

After lunch the groups were rearranged so that students were seated with others who had similar staff positions (editor-in-chief, news/other, arts/entertainment, sports, photo, online, etc.) so that they could discuss specific issues related to their jobs.

All Southern California schools were invited and nine responded, but students from two of the schools didn’t make it. And because of the poor weather, even schools that did not attend often brought fewer students than they said they would (see budget notes at bottom). Schools that participated were Cerritos, Pierce, Glendale, Moorpark, Southwestern, Riverside and El Camino.

Best comment of the day: “I thought this (event) might be boring, but it is awesome.” A key to that was scheduling almost all of the time for students just to talk to each other.

Here are some of the thoughts students came up with in their lists:

BIGGEST PROBLEMS

• Intervention by student government (shared by almost all of the groups)
• Getting staff members to meet deadlines (again, shared by almost all groups)
• School staff not cooperating with the paper (an example of Theater not allowing photos during dress rehearsal)
• Staff communication
• Staff respect for each other
• Determining when to cut stories/pages or to grant extensions when stories are late
• Getting staff members to want to write news (as opposed to reviews)
• Working with dedicated staff members vs. non-dedicated staff members
• Whether or not there should be a newswriting pre-requisite to the newspaper: Most would like to see one, but fear they would not have big enough staffs
• Getting students –especially new students– to put in the time needed for the class
• Getting writers and how to train them if they have not had newswriting first
• Balancing writing, editing and production in the overall production cycle
• Adequate editing while also trying to publish news quickly (example: stories posted online with lots of errors that later have to be corrected)
• Staff attrition
• Recruiting writers and photographers
• Balancing online efforts with print efforts

ADVISERS (note: students could say good OR bad things about advisers)

• Advisers need to back off and let students do the work
• Advisers don’t always fully appreciating the demand on students with full-time loads or jobs
• Advisers pushing New Media too hard
• Advisers not knowing when to step back: They can be pushy or hover too much
• Advisers should be open to questions
• Advisers need to be up to date with new technologies
• Advisers should encourage staffs to interact outside class, both with themselves and other students on campus.
• Advisers can be “bullet sponges,” that is, they can be a mediating shield when people complain about content
• Advisers sometimes push stories too much, stories the students are not interested in
• Some advisers push design advice and then criticize the outcome
• Some advisers intervene too much
• Some advisers will not allow off-campus critical reviews
• Some advisers review pages before they are sent to the printer and require last-minute changes
• Students hate it when advisers skip after-issue critiques
• Students like advisers who give them a free hand with the paper
• Students like critiques
• Some advisers cooperate with the editor(s) better than others
• Students like it when advisers teach them how to do things
• Overall, students are grateful for their advisers

COVERING THE RECESSION (again students were free to answer this any way they wanted; some listed story ideas)

• Use infographs
• Use photo illustrations
• “Put faces to the stories”
• Use multimedia packages
• Write about cutting of enrollments
• Do stories on alternatives to high book costs
• Do stories on how campus businesses (i.e., bookstores) are impacted
• Localize state and national news stories
• Ask students how cuts have affected them
• Cover school budget cuts
• Monitor how well the college spends its money
• Do features on job opportunities and how to apply for jobs and polish resumes
• Use diagrams/bullet points
• Conduct man-in-the-street interviews
• Talk about unemployment issues
• Talk about the future (and how the Stimulus Plan will affect the college)
• Talk to Economics teachers
• Do stories on how students are coping with cuts
• One school is preparing a special “cheap” issue; how to do things more cheaply
• Outline ways to get/keep jobs. Talk to those who have lost jobs
• Write profile features of students and faculty, focusing on impact of the economy

BEING ON STAFF

• Students need to balance school, jobs and the paper
• You will make enemies on campus
• It’s fun
• You get to create/establish new relationships
• You broaden your horizons when you take on different kinds of stories (news/opinion/feature), especially when you came in interested in only one kind
• You shouldn’t join the newspaper unless they are dedicated
• You shouldn’t be afraid to take on new work/heavier workloads
• You make friends/connections for life
• You have creative freedom
• It is a learning experience
• You can make collective food purchases and save money (or just mooch off others)
• You get to share your passion by covering topics of interest
• There is too much gossip among staff members
• Romantic relationships on staff always end up badly
• Communication among students needs to be better
• Staffs need to determine and communicate acceptable speech and behavior standards (and before the first production night!)
• Staffs need to work out how they are going to deal with differing music choices (and before the first production night!)
• You learn a lot
• You learn responsibility
• Working on the paper can be all consuming
• It is good for networking
• You get hands-on experience you would not get your first years at a university.

BUDGET NOTES

Total cost for running the day was about $400-$500. The bulk of that was in food. Our out-of-pocket expenses were minimal, though. We have a caterer advertiser who is taking out his advertising in trade, so box lunches did not take any cash. We ended up ordering too many box lunches because schools told us they were bringing more students than they did. If we do this again we might charge $5 a person, just to help offset cost overages like this. We have found in the past that “free” often is looked at as “I don’t really have a commitment.” Of course, we could have supplied lunch for half the cost if we had just ordered pizza. Other expenses were for sodas, juice, water, donuts and muffins. It helps that we do a number of events each school year that involve serving food, so we have already purchased many items such as good table clothes, coffee makers, ice buckets, silverware and name tags. The Journalism Association of Community Colleges donated notebooks and a couple of sweatshirts to raffle off as door prizes. The school has adequate meeting space that we have learned to book in ways that costs us nothing. We save on cleanup costs by cleaning up ourselves after events; we’re just used to it.

Biggest obstacles in doing something like this:

• Just deciding to do it
• Supplying food (but as noted we’ve got that figured out)
• Getting people to register by the food-ordering deadline. We had a school call the afternoon before saying, “We just heard about this, can we still come?” Yes, but the food ordering deadline was five days earlier. Those who don’t plan/run these types of events don’t appreciate that.
• Getting people to show when they say they will
• Signage on campus (because of the rain we didn’t do anything; some people got lost, but eventually found their way).

New approach to student magazine

This week Cerritos Journalism launched a new version of its Wings magazine. I’m really excited about the new concept.

The new magazine, which will be published in six installments over the course of the semester, has just one story/topic per installment. It is essentially a four-page tabloid newspaper, but it folds down to a 5.5-inch by 6-inch size for the cover. When you pick it up it looks like a story brochure on newsprint, but as you turn pages you start unfolding until the center spread opens up to a double-truck tabloid layout.

In years past we’ve tried to publish an annual journalistic magazine along with the Talon Marks newspaper and its online cousin talonmarks.com.

But there have been problems:

• We often do not really have enough students enrolled to comprise a full class and attempts we’ve made to spread the net have not always resulted in cohesive teams. I tried to widen the base to involve other campus groups, but the journalism students pretty much revolted and ignored the outsiders.
• The cost rarely is justified with the distribution we get. We publish it at the end of the school year and it often comes out during finals week, so most students never see it. The cost per copy is expensive, especially when compared, say, to the student newspaper.
• Students usually seem more interested in design than writing; too many designers and not enough writers or photographers.
• When they DO think about writing, they talk and plan for weeks, but end up throwing something together at the last minute.
• And I feel that anything we do these days MUST have an online component. Students keep promising, but because they work so hard just to get the print publication done by the end of the semester, they never follow through with the online.

When students came to me this time and asked if they could do a magazine next semester, I was looking for a kind way to say “no.” But then I walked into Starbucks and walked out with the perfect solution. Mind you, I’m not a Starbucks regular. I just HAPPENED to stop in that day. On the counter I saw a copy of Good magazine, which is really just a weekly ‘zine that covers just one article/topic at a time.

I immediately saw potential:

• We could do it with fewer students; perhaps giving individuals responsibility for putting together one package every few weeks and staggering issues. While I would encourage a team component, personality problems could be handled easier because individuals would be working on their own projects. I could run the class as a directed studies class, where I can get by with just two or three students. If it become successful, we could start producing more often and perhaps draw enough students someday to support a regular class.
• I did the math and if we could sell the right amount of advertising the project could actually pay for itself (sans salaries, of course, but at our level we don’t pay salaries anyway, we give class credit). If we can sell two color ads it’ll pay for full color on all pages.
• No more “working all semester” for one product that might get out before the semester. With one-topic ‘zines we could set up a weekly schedule if we wanted. (We’re starting with a two-week cycle in the middle of the semester, or six for this semester. If we continue in the fall we’ll try for eight.)
• The inside of the ‘zine would be devoted to the story and students could experiment with different double-spread designs. And they would not be so overwhelmed with the struggle of wanting different designs but needing to work with a cohesive overall look. The cover and some standard elements would be the same, but each student could experiment with major components. The student in charge would be responsible for the package, but could rely on the help of others to help produce the content; he/she is mostly an editor/producer for the issue.
• With a multi-issue-per-semester cycle the deadline problem is reduced, though with the first issue the editor put off writing until the end …. again. Still, it was not a whole semester of thinking before doing.
• And we set a rule that we would not send the print edition to the printer until the multimedia component was done. Well, we weakened on that a bit with the first issue, especially since the printer cannot handle the last fold that we need by machine; we have to fold it by hand. While the student completes the online component we are folding; we won’t distribute until the multimedia component is completed and launched.

There are still issues to work out and well have to wait and see whether the format is popular with readers –we suspect that it will be—but we’re excited. Print is not dead, but it needs to change. And after all the push we’ve been making with multimedia, it is exciting to try something new with print.

Inside layout of Wings ‘zine is essentially a double truck tabloid layout.

Getting ready for leap to new online tool

Talon Marks editors and I have been spending the last few weeks learning the ins and outs of a new content management tool for talonmarks.com. College Publisher, our online partner since December 2000, is introducing a new, high-end tool for college publications and we’re part of the first wave of colleges and universities in the country –and most likely the first community college– to switch over to the tool. Over the next year or so approximately 550-600 other colleges and universities will join us.

Cerritos College is one of the first to switch over for several reasons:

1. We embrace change, especially as it helps us train our students best for future media jobs,
2. I’ve been instrumental in helping other California community colleges make the leap to online publications, many of them with College Publisher, and
3. It is likely that as other California community colleges make the switch over the next year, they’ll call on me to supplement the great over-the-phone training that College Publisher provides its education partners. The company is located on the east coast, though, and it helps California’s community colleges to have a volunteer on the ground that can help them master the new tool. I don’t work for College Publisher, but I do spend a lot of time traveling to other community colleges and helping train their staffs, as well as my own, to do online journalism better. And it will take a while of working with my own students to learn the tool well enough to do that.

There are a lot of advantages to the new system, but with those advantages comes additional complexity. We’re finding, though, that for most of what needs to be done on a daily basis, students can pick it up pretty easily. The true test will come after this Wednesday when we go live with the new tool. Will our new students, who are still learning to report and write be able to grasp the necessities of the new tool. It was just a week ago or two that we even introduced them to online publishing using the old version of College Publisher that has become part and parcel of what we do in publishing even the print edition.

The new version is still a tool, though, and what matters is how we use it. Developing content –and not just the standard written fare that we prepare for the print edition– is what is important. But the excitement of new possibilities is already spurring synergy for the changes we want to make. Click on the image above to see the house ad scheduled for this week’s print edition that outlines some of the online features we’ll have with the new version. And then check in starting Wednesday morning to see the new version when it goes live.