[NU Sports] Medill

[Mike Nolan]

> Last year I dropped my daily newspaper(Trib or Daily Herald -- who ever made me the least mad in regards to delivery and coverage), which I subscribed to since junior year of college.
> 
> This year I find that I no longer visit content sites directly with the exception of ESPN.  I now use news.google.com for topic searches and based on experience choose among the different sources.

Except to see if the Cubs lost and on football Saturdays, I don't visit 
ESPN.com as much as I used to.  Their site keeps getting more annoying.

We still get the daily newspaper here, though I doubt I look at it more than 
2 or 3 times a week except maybe to glance at the front page if it's still
on the table at supper time.  I probably hit that paper's website more often 
than that.  I don't even read the comics every day.  Sometimes I think the 
main reason we still get it is that my wife likes to do the crossword 
puzzle and jumble.

I look at several newspaper websites more frequently, my personal favorite 
being New Jersey Online, not because of any relationship I have with New 
Jersey, but because I think it's one of the better organized such sites,
and they don't make me register for access!  http://www.nj.com/newsflash

I also subscribe to the Wall Street Journal's online site (the only news
site I pay for access to, I wonder how Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of Dow
Jones will affect that), and I tend to look at the Washington Post's 
website every day or two, because it tends to have more political news on
the front page than most newspaper websites.   

I'm glad to hear Medill is trying to keep up with the times, though 
journalism skills should remain a constant regardless of the medium.
(Journalism is still 'literature in a hurry', as Matthew Arnold noted
in the 19th century.)

At times I have my doubts that really happens, but maybe that's a 
discussion for a different time, and possibly a different place.  A few 
years was invited to lecture to the 'Sports Journalism' class at the 
University of Nebraska (because of my long experience with online sports 
forums), the attitudes of the students towards online journalism and the
standards that should apply to it worried me, hopefully they've changed 
since then.

Several ago a List member thought he was being daring when he included
some of his posts to the list about the Cats in his portfolio.  (I don't 
know if that helped him get a job or not.)  I wonder if having online 
experience is still considered unusual?  I suspect not, if Medill is any 
gauge.
--
Mike Nolan