Terry Cowgill

Backpack Journalism

Just read a really cool piece in Editor & Publisher on the new breed of mobile journalists (known as “mojos”). Unfortunately, the article is only accessible online if you are a E&P subscriber, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it will change the way I work.

Actually, I’ve been moving in this direction for some time. While at the NYPA convention in Albany last month, I attended a seminar on backpack journalism. The concept is pretty much what it sounds like. With advances in technology, it’s now possible to work from almost anywhere. Plus, what better way to serve the interests of your readers than to get out of the office and look for news at street level?

A typical backpack journo rides around on a bicycle or in a modest car and carries with him a wireless-capable laptop, digital camera, tripod and cell phone. The LJ has provided me a with a pretty good camera and I already own the other four items. That means I’m ready. Watch out.

The advantages of this approach are many: you can stumble upon news, write a story or take some video and have it up on the web within minutes.

I’ve already practiced what I call tote-bag journalism, as when I videoed a couple of guys paddle surfing last September at the Salisbury Town Grove and filmed part of the Salisbury Memorial Day festivities a year ago. The difference is that now I can upload the clip quickly via a wireless connection on my Macbook.

Of course, I also experimented with live blogging the town meeting earlier this month on the purchase of land in Salisbury for a new transfer station. I got positive feedback from a woman who walked up to me in the Stop & Shop and said she loved the immediacy and informality of it.

As soon as the weather turns nice (Monday?), I’m going to make a practice of bicycling to work. I will pack my journo tools and see what happens. And I’ll even save some bucks on gasoline. Wish me luck.

P.S. Eat your heart out, Sam Herrick.

P.P.S. Sam is the business manager for the Region One School District. During the warmer months, he regularly bicycles from his home in Sheffield to the office in Falls Village. I’d say it’s 15 miles each way. Iron Man Sam is amazing.

Making the Rounds

Evidently my earlier post on David Horowitz’s appearance Thursday at Hotchkiss has made the rounds. It’s now posted on Horowitz’s own publication’s website, FrontPage Magazine.

From there, it found its way onto lucianne.com, the website of literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, who made headlines during the Monica Lewinsky scandal when she met with Linda Tripp and urged her to take incriminating tapes to independent counsel Ken Starr.

Now, where are my royalties? I need a new cell phone …

You Shoulda Went to Law School

Kudos to my colleague Rick Green of The Hartford Courant, who took first prize in the 2007 National Awards for Education Reporting from the National Education Writers Association. Rick won the award for a column he wrote last year on a substitute teacher in Norwich facing criminal charges because porno pop-up windows inadvertently started appearing on a computer one day in her classroom.

Because of Rick’s fine work (and that of others), the teacher’s conviction was overturned. We like Rick at the LJ because he is one of the only Courant writers (along with Cornwall resident Rinker Buck) who ventures out to the NWC to actually see what’s going on. For his trouble, Rick gets a plaque and $150, which just might be enough to fill his car’s tank come Christmas time.

Horror on the Left: Horowitz and Academic Freedom

In watching David Horowitz’s transformation from lefty radical, confidant of Huey Newton and the son of communists, all the way to conservative Republican, I have always marveled at how deeply the hard left despises him — more so than they do most right wingers.

I suppose it’s because he is seen as a turncoat — someone who used to be one of them, but has peered through the fog and rejected heroes of the left such as Howard Zinn, whom Horowitz condemned last night as “a Stalinist fraud.”

Once Nancy Johnson country, the Northwest Corner is now solidly blue. Still, about 75 people turned out see Horowitz at the Elfers music hall at The Hotchkiss School [see photo at left]. Before he began, Horowitz worked the room, introducing himself to everyone there. I chatted briefly with him about being a community journalist — a job he professed great respect for because “you really get to know the people you cover.”

The appearance was sponsored by the Hotchkiss Republicans and Young America’s Foundation, a conservative young people’s organization Horowitz has supported for years.

Horowitz, a nationally known author and activist who appears regularly as a guest on cable news shows, has long been a champion of academic freedom and has lamented the extent to which academia has been dominated by the left, especially on college campuses, but also in settings such as Hotchkiss.

In her introduction, Natalie Boyse, a junior at the school and a member of the Hotchkiss Republicans, lionized Horowitz in a way that would probably even make the Heritage Foundation blush.

Continue reading Horror on the Left: Horowitz and Academic Freedom…

FYI …

… I am scheduled to appear this morning at 9:10 a.m. on WAMC’s Journalists’ Roundtable. On the agenda will be President Bush’s visit tomorrow to Kent and possibly some NWC real estate talk. Click here to listen live. Just before that at 8:30 a.m., I will will make my usual appearance on Marshall & Mike.

Writing Our Obit

Are newspapers really on the ropes? I emerged from two days last week in Albany at a newspaper convention wondering whether the imminent death of print media has been greatly exaggerated. My conclusion: it’s not an exaggeration, especially for the big guys.

As was the case at last year’s NYPA convention, there were some long faces after a series of seminars predicting the painful decline of what’s black and white and red all over. And for good reason.

The approximate figures I heard for 2007: ad revenue (classified and display) at the print divisions of U.S. newspapers declined by almost 10 percent at a time when several major events (e.g. the Iraq war and the run-up to the presidential primaries) no doubt increased the appetite for news nationwide.

But online advertising at those same companies grew by 20%. At about 10%, Web advertising is still a small portion of overall ad revenue, but it is the only sector that consistently shows growth.

True, most print divisions are still profitable, but their stocks are down all over the place because of the dismal projections of future performance. Others newspaper companies such as the dreadful Journal Register Company, which owns just about every other newspaper in this neck of the woods except for the LJ, have taken on so much debt that they can scarcely make their payments.

Continue reading Writing Our Obit…

Oh, Albany!

With apologies to William Kennedy …

Sorry for the light blogging of late. I am at a newspaper conference in New York’s capital city and just haven’t had time to write anything. As I write this during a brief break in the action, there is a lot of talk here about the future of newspapers. It seems the future only looks bright for community papers like the LJ and its two other papers. I will post something on the conference later.

I’m going to be leaving the convention a little early so that I can get back to Salisbury by 5 p.m., when a reception starts at the Ragamont Inn to test the waters about starting an independent historical society for the town. Click here to read my preview story and here for the editorial that ran this week. I’d be interested to get your thoughts.

I’ll also post my take on the reception and let you know how it went in advance of Thursday’s print edition. After all, I ‘d better practice what they’re telling me to do here. Lots of these presenters are telling us that we need to think of ourselves less as weekly newspapers than as content providers who need to use the web to create more immediacy and usefulness for our audience. More later…

A Currier & Ives World

It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m sitting here in a ski lodge in the Adirondacks waiting for my son to burn off some steam and I ran across a glitzy publication while rummaging around my tote bag. Arriving in my mailbox on Friday, it bills itself as “the premier publication for the people of Northwestern Connecticut.”

To be sure, there are some nice features by some experienced and accomplished writers. And I am very impressed by the amount of advertising the magazine’s ad reps were able to sell. This is a slick publication printed in four-color graphics on glossy coated paper. It’s full of trendy features on gardens, dinner parties and horses. In a word, it is everything Litchfield County is not — or everything I hope it won’t turn into.

Continue reading A Currier & Ives World…

Oh Canada, Free Mark Steyn!

I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time. And now that I’ve got a free moment …

You know, I get a kick when I hear my lefty friends lament our shortcomings in the U.S. We should be more enlightened and farsighted. We should be more like western Europe or Canada. Canada? I don’t think so.

I’m a graduate of a very fine little university in the province of Quebec. During my 4 1/2 years there, I found a lot to like about Canada . There are some of the smartest, kindest, warm-hearted people you will find anywhere. Both the provincial and federal governments have done a pretty good job of eradicating poverty. The education systems seemed to be in decent shape and so forth.

But I also found much not to like. Despite the collective power of their intellect, the Canadian people were remarkably inclined toward knuckleheaded public policies — especially on civil liberties.

When I arrived as a freshman in 1976, I headed straight to the university radio station (forget the library!), eager to make my presence felt and learn a thing or two about broadcasting. When I submitted a programming proposal and playlist to the station manager, he looked it over carefully and shook his head after about 30 seconds. I remember thinking, “Well, I guess he’s not an Allman Brothers fan.”

Continue reading Oh Canada, Free Mark Steyn!…

LJ 03.06.08

Lots of good stories this week but I would draw your attention to two of them in particular.

Judy Linscott wrote a terrific profile of Salisbury’s Izzy Decker, who is 85 years young and was one of the old fashioned telephone operators in Lakeville in the 1940s and ’50s. Izzy is hilarious, as when she described the plight of today’s young people weighted down by half a ton of books:

“They’ve got backpacks out to here — what the hell are they studying?”

Dick Paddock, who writes about local history like no one else, has an extended feature on the 120th anniversary of the great blizzard of 1888. As usual, the piece is well researched and contains the kind of detail and good humor we have all come to expect from with Dick. Grab the print edition to see the great photos.