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Transcript for
2005 Batten Symposium
and
Awards for Innovations in Journalism
Sept.
12, 2005
National
Press Club, Washington, D.C.
Bryan Monroe
Chairman, Batten Awards Advisory Board
Assistant Vice President - News, Knight Ridder Inc.
I’d like to hearken back to the person that these
awards are named after; Jim Batten. Jim was a mentor of mine and a
friend of mine. He
was the former CEO of Knight Ridder, but he was, at his heart, a journalist.
A journalist who, two decades ago, was experimenting with storytelling,
experimenting with journalism, experimenting with innovation.
With the rudimentary tools we had back then, he was pushing
all of us to explore new ways to help engage our readers because he
knew that if
we didn’t change, if we didn’t adopt, if we didn’t
try new things, we may be in danger.
We were working on a project 10 or 15 years ago called
the 25-43 Project where we looked at baby boomers, the readers born
between 1946 and 1964,
and looking at ways to make newspaper – you know, the old soybean
ink on dead trees thing – more appealing to younger readers. And
he told us when we were working on the project, “Go out on the
edge of the tree limb; jump up and down. If it doesn’t break, take
another step; jump up and down. If it doesn’t break, take another
step. When it breaks, take a step back.”
And I think all the folks you’ve seen today have
been taking those steps out on the limb to really test the edges of
storytelling and innovation
in journalism.
The great thing about this process has been that, while
there has been technology involved in a lot of things, this is not
a technology award.
While there’s been journalism and writing and editing and photography
involved in a lot of these efforts, this not a journalism or writing
or editing award. It is about innovation and it’s about journalism.
Technology
has become the great equalizer. You can have the powerful presentation
you saw with Newsday or the Miami Herald,
where a large
staff works hours and days and weeks on something to really make it powerful
and make an impact on the community and nationwide, or, in the case of
Newsday, around the world. And you also have the one-man bands: David,
and the couple folks – Adrian and Wilson – who put together
chicagocrime.org, who showed that with just a dream and some passion,
a few late nights, and maybe a couple of beers, you can really do some
great things.
Still,
not just anyone can do this. This is some extraordinary work you’ve
been seeing. Not just anyone can do it, but the great thing about it
is anyone can try.
You’ve
also seen the increased yearning for news. I just returned from south
Mississippi. I arrived in Biloxi, Miss., Monday evening during Hurricane
Katrina. I actually flew into Atlanta, drove down I-65 through Montgomery,
Ala.,
made it into
Mobile at about 6:00, and made it to Biloxi at about
7:00 as the storm was going up the other way. For the next few days
I was working with our newspaper there, the Biloxi Sun-Herald, to help
them produce the paper throughout the storm, and I believe they were
the only paper on the coast in the affected area that published in print
every day. The Times-Picayune published on the Web and then resumed
later that week.
As
we were in that community, I was out passing out papers on the streets
with homes destroyed and the place leveled like a nuclear
bomb hit it.
Aide workers and the media were the only ones who got in early. As we
were passing out papers to the citizens left in that community, we were
seeing the looks on their faces about getting the information. Then
we looked at the Web presentation: For instance, in Biloxi, their
normal Web traffic was somewhere around 65,000 page views a day, but
during
the week that the hurricane hit they were averaging 1.5 to 1.8 million
page views a day. There was a significant change because people were
hungry for information, they were hungry for stories, they were hungry
for context. They wanted to place this great tragedy in their lives and
reach out to those – whether they were in Mississippi or New Orleans – whose
lives were changed. And that’s the role we continue to play.
People who say we’ve got an endangered business – whether
it’s newspapers or television or online – I don’t buy
it. I don’t buy it at all, especially looking at what’s happened
over the last couple of weeks in this country and in the gulf coast and
how important a role journalism and storytelling has played throughout
all the mediums.
So when people say we don’t
matter, don’t
listen to them.
• Continue
to Tom Kunkel's luncheon welcome
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