Ian was passionate about flying. He'd logged more than 3,000 hours as pilot and was qualified as a light aircraft instructor, a helicopter pilot, and ratings instructor. He was also a formation display pilot with the Red Sparrows aerobatic team and had d been the consulting editor for Pilot magazine for three years.

I'd known Ian for a few years, primarily when he was director of group business development and new media for the Archant newspaper chain, for which, until recently, he'd been employed for 19 years. I'd last seen him in May during the EPublishing Innovations Forum 2008 conference in London, and had enjoyed his after-work company at Ifra's Beyond the Printed Word conferences in Dublin last year and in Vienna in 2006, Besides being a forward-thinking New Media executive for print publications (and there aren't that many of those who are truly forward-thinking!), Ian was a renowned bon vivant -- great company at a meal, drink, or conversation. I last talked to him July 31. I learn of his death from his other friends' testimonials to him on his own home page on Facebook.

The Press Gazette, trade journal of the U.K. newspaper industry, features Archant's posthumous testimonial to Davies. Testimonials have also appeared from hometown's weekly newspaper.

Since leaving Archant earlier this year, Ian had been looking for something new to do, as he explained on his own website.

I'll miss Ian. The sole solace is that he died doing what he loved -- flying.

(Ian Davies photo courtesy of Carol de Solla Atkin)

By Vin Crosbie at 11:37 AM | Permalink Comments (0) TrackBacks (0)

(Kegs photo by Jeramey Jannene via Flickr. No endorsement by him of this posting is implied.)

Do the executives who manage America's major daily newspaper publishing companies think they know what they're doing? They'll assure you the answer is yes. But how obvious does the evidence have to be before even they have to admit that the answer obviously is no?

My biweekly column at the ClickZ.com online marketing site provides sobering examples. Three years ago, if you had purchased $10,000 worth of beer and then got drunk each day ever since, the value of the deposits on the beer kegs would have given you a better Return on Investment than if you had investment that $10,000 in almost any U.S. newspaper company. Moreover, you'd have plenty of beer left and would have had a much better time!

Indeed, using today's stock prices for those companies, buying beer and getting drunk night would on average have given you a ROI three times better.

Even worse, if you had invested in the McClatchy company, beer instead would have given a seven-times better ROI. Beer yielded a 12-times better ROI than the Journal Register Company. And beer toasted a 41 times better ROI than an investment Gatehouse Media. The executives of those companies are losing advertising, losing circulation, and losing the financial community's confidence. The executives can hardly make a case for being financially sober. In their cases, the 'empties' aren't the beer kegs.

What does it take to spotlight that these companies' managements aren't on the right tracks. What examples do I have to tap?

By Vin Crosbie at 04:45 PM | Permalink Comments (0) TrackBacks (0)

In case anyone reading this is interested, the Newspaper Department at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University, seeks an experienced journalist with strong multimedia skills to join a department committed to preserving core journalistic competencies while teaching students to tell stories in online media. Work in the school's new Collaborative Media Room, and teach many of our 400 undergraduate and graduate students in the Newspaper and Magazine print majors to deliver content interactively and using multiple media.

Qualifications: At least 10 years of experience in the news environment, with a strong reporting and writing resume and facility with still and video capture and editing and/or interactive and database reporting. You must submit a portfolio that demonstrates your hands-on storytelling talent for multiple platforms. Master's or other advanced degree preferred. Tenure-track position at associate or assistant professor level. Previous teaching experience is not required, but you must show potential in the classroom.

Expect to teach traditional reporting and writing for print as well as for online delivery, and to also work with some of our broadcast professors and students. You should be able to play a significant role in our new visual storytelling class being prepared as a requirement for incoming freshmen in every one of our eight majors. The school is launching a content-managed, student-produced Web site in 2009, and it is a participant in the Carnegie-Knight News21 Initiative.

This is a tenure-track, nine-month appointment, with a requirement to teach five classes per year and to pursue a research-creative agenda -- preferably related to manufacture and delivery of news and information online. The Newhouse School is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty and especially welcomes applicants from underrepresented groups. Syracuse University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.

Review of applications begins November 2008. Start: August 2009.

How to Apply: Candidates should visit http:www.sujobopps.com to read the detailed faculty postings and apply electronically. All positions require a cover letter, CV or resume and a list of four professional references. If you have any questions about the opening please contact Steve Davis, chair, Newspaper Department, at jsdavi02@syr.edu.

By Vin Crosbie at 04:27 PM | Permalink Comments (0) TrackBacks (0)

In May, when after a year of teaching graduate school courses, I wrote a ClickZ.com column lamenting how resistant to change many media schools are about New Media, I was amused when my friend Jeff Jarvis tried to hijack my column and turn it into an advertisement for his smaller and competing school.

"Reading Vin Crosbie's piece about the resistance to change and general obstructionism he has found teaching at journalism school (he doesn't say it, but he has spent the year at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University), it makes me triply glad I am teaching at CUNY [City University of New York] Graduate School of Journalism. This will come off as blatant self-promotion for the school but so be it....When I arrived at CUNY, I feared I would find what Vin did. But I haven't, not at all. I thought I might be marginalized as the crazy guy. But that hasn't happened....Instead, in the last few months, I've been teaching the faculty itself in all the tools of online: blogs, wikis, RSS, video, SEO, and on and on. The best part of this has not been my colleagues' receptivity to, curiosity about, and eagerness to adapt the tools themselves in their classes but the discussion we have shared about the impact of these tools on journalism and education. We've had rich back and forth on the new architecture of media and news that the impact of this change on journalism education."

Well, much as I love Budapest and Kuala Lumpur and congratulate their countries about their economy's growth, I'd much rather be working here in the United States. Indeed, when my one-year contract to teach graduate school courses at Syracuse University expired a week after I wrote my column and that university offered to renew it, I did so without hesitation, despite offers from other media schools.

There might be some old-fashioned professors, including a few obstructionists, in my school, as there are at most schools, but I'd rather help navigate a supercarrier with its awesome firepower, than serve in the navy of a smaller country of lesser prowess. When I recently read about Arizona State University receiving a $552,000 grant "to create an incubator where students will learn how to create and launch digital media products," I had a similar feeling as I sat in my office within Syracuse University's 72,000 square-foot, $32.5 million dollar Newhouse III building, which is devoted to New Media.

With all due respect to Jeff and his school, I was miffed about seeing my column hijacked into an ad for another school. I've been meaning to respond. Had I known someone would use what I wrote to tout another school, I would have balanced the disadvantages I mentioned by also mentioning my school's overwhelming advantages.

Jeff is improving CUNY. As he has written, he's teaching his school's faculty how to use blogs, wikis, RSS, video, SEO, and Twitter. We're doing that here at Syracuse, too. Moreover, the other New Media professors and I have begun cross-training Syracuse faculty, whose ranks number several times larger the size of those at other media school. We've begun teaching photography, audio, and video to the professors in the newspaper, magazine, advertising, and public relations departments, and also teaching all of the schools' professors how to build and operate Web sites (including Dreamweaver and XML), nonetheless to use RSS, blogware, etc. Our efforts are helped by having all three Newhouse School buildings networked with 25 miles of 100-gigabyte Ethernet onto a 72-terabyte server array. Our supercarrier has nuclear propulsion.

At Syracuse, we've also been lucky to have some wonderful guest speakers in the school. Sports broadcaster Bob Costas was in today, as was ESPN's Mike Turico last week. I want my New Media Business students to listen in particular to Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide CEO Kevin Roberts and Optimedia CEO Antony Young, who each will be here next month. Last semester, I had Rob Curley, Bob Cauthorn, and Rafat Ali each meet with my New Media Business class.

Those are only some of the reasons why I'm now in my second academic year of teaching at Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Last year, I taught New Media Business as two weekly classes over 15 weeks, a total of 28 classes not counting mid-term and final exams. This year, because of the school's class scheduling and my classroom preference, I'm teaching it as 14 once per week classes. So, the course's syllabus can vary semester by semester. However, here is what I'm teaching this semester:

Continue reading "Life Aboard an Academic Supercarrier" »

By Vin Crosbie at 09:48 PM | Permalink Comments (0) TrackBacks (0)

Defining what the term New Media means and its potential. Ten minutes from a New Media Business conducted at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications on September 3, 2008, by Adjunct Professor and Senior Consultant about Executive Education in New Media Vin Crosbie.

By Vin Crosbie at 08:42 PM | Permalink Comments (0) TrackBacks (0)

In the second part of my essay, Transforming American Newspapers, I mentioned several corollary effects that occur when the sheer number of Media vehicles radically increases. However, I inadvertently omitted two other corollary effects.

The primary business model of most Mass Media vehicles (newspapers, magazines, broadcast programs, etc.) is to attract sufficient numbers of consumers so that the vehicle will attract advertisers who will pay to place their advertisements either adjacent or interstitial to the content that attracts the consumers. The more consumers the vehicle attracts, the higher the rates the advertiser are willing to pay and the more money the vehicle earns.

Yet when the sheer number of Media vehicles radically increases, the median number of consumers attracted to any vehicle decreases because the total number of consumers are spread across many more vehicles (the so-called 'fragmentation' of audiences). That tends to reduce the median revenues of those vehicles. Mass Media vehicles try to compensate for this by (1) 'dumbing' the quality of their content, attempting to attract a larger audience by appealing to a lower common denominator and restore larger numbers of consumers.

That corollary effect is why so many television networks have 'dumbed down' (a wonderful technical term) their programs. The plethora of 'reality' programs are examples. Other examples are how formerly 'quality ' programs or 'quality' networks are now purveying content of questionable quality. For instance, the Biography television program on the Arts & Entertainment Network used to broadcast biographies of Einstein, Picasso, and Michelangelo, but now broadcasts biographies of Madonna, Jim Carey, and Britney Spears. Or, for instances, how the Learning Channel used to broadcast programs about mathematics, science, and the humanities but now broadcasts programs about purchasing real estate, upgrading wardrobes, and home furnishings.

The another corollary effect that I inadvertently omitted is similar. When the sheer number of Media vehicles radically increases and the median number of consumers attracted to any vehicle decreases, (2) Mass Media vehicles become more timid, fearing further loss of consumers. No surprise.

Both of these effects are caused by the radical increase in the supply of media vehicles consumers now have. Both doom us to increasingly crass content on television and, more often than not, more timid content in all Mass Media nowadays.

By Vin Crosbie at 09:43 PM | Permalink Comments (0) TrackBacks (0)