Karen Dunlap, POYNTER INSTITUTE president: Mr. Media Interview

Image by dbking via Flickr

What a crazy, crazy world.

When I invited today’s guest, Karen Dunlap, president of the Poynter Institute, to be a guest on the show today, it was ostensibly to discuss Poynter’s upcoming collection of newspaper front pages titled President Obama: Election 2009.

And we’re still going to do that.

But then everything got turned upside-down.

Sunday night rumors of Tribune Company—owner of everything from the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Orlando Sentinel and even the Chaicago Cubs—declaring bankruptcy became reality on Monday morning.

Then the august New York Times revealed it was exploring mortgaging its new headquarters tower in Manhattan to sustain itself through one of the worst newspaper advertising slumps in history.

Oh, and then this morning, Alaska residents discovered they no long had the most ridiculed governor in the nation as Americans learned how allegedly and nakedly corrupt was the governor of Illinois. Why is Gov. Rod Blagojevich relevant to a discussion of journalism topics? In all the other headlines, you might have missed reading the Blagojevich allegation of pressuring the owner of the Chicago Tribune “to fire a critical editorial writer.”

And it’s only Wednesday, folks!

Anyway, Karen Dunlap is a delightful woman who I’ve known for many years, back to the days when she was a college journalism professor. She is a trailblazer in journalism education circles and just a smart, savvy person to know.

Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, I have done freelance writing and editing assignment over the last several years, most of which you can find online at poynter.org.

You can LISTEN to this interview with KAREN DUNLAP, president of the POYNTER INSTITUTE, by clicking the BlogTalkRadio.com audio player below!

Open in your default player
Detach into a separate window

Subscribe to Mr. Media's RSS/XML Feed

Get MR. MEDIA Interviews delivered by email! Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

INDEX to MR. MEDIA INTERVIEWS

TV Stars * TV Producers * Movie Stars * Movie Directors, Producers, documentary Filmmakers and Screenwriters * Politicians and Political Writers * Stand-Up Comedians * Health Experts * Magazine Editors * Radio Stars * Bloggers, Podcasters and Web Producers * Novelists * Musicians and Music Journalists * Sexuality Experts * Culture and Society Experts * Food Experts * Biographers, Historians and A.J. Jacobs * Athletes and Sports Experts * Photographers * Journalists * Crime Experts * CEOs and Business Experts * Comic Book Creators * Cartoonists * Will Eisner Co-Workers, Friends and Experts

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Roadmap For Building a 21st Century Newspaper
• Tribune and Tribune Co. Issue Blagojevich Statements
• Tribune Company Going Bankrupt ?
• Peter Preston: It's owners, not papers, that are the problem
• Twilight of the Newspapers
• Chicago media powerhouse faces bankruptcy
• Tribune Company files for bankruptcy
• Tribune Company gives AP notice
• Chicago Tribune to cut 80 newsroom jobs
• The Media Equation: Newspapers Jettisoning Top Talent to Cut Costs
• New York Times looks to sell HQ to raise $225m
• Governor Threatened Tribune Over Criticism
• Blagojevich Threatened Tribune, Too
• Where the Good News Is
• No Blago Influence, Says Chicago Tribune [Journalismism]
• Today in Blagojevich: Tribune Co. Acknowledges Subpoena

Journalist Index to Mr. Media Interviews

The
Mr. Media
Interviews
By Bob Andelman


Subscribe to Mr. Media in iTunes!

JOURNALIST INTERVIEWS

Paul Gillin
blogger, NewspaperDeathWatch.com


Rene Syler
co-host, CBS “Early Show”; author, “Good Enough Mother”


Karen Dunlap
president, Poynter Institute


Clay Bennett
Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist


Laurel Touby
Mediabistro.com founder, socializer-in-chief


Marlise Kast
Tabloid Prodigy, Globe magazine


Jeff Kreisler
My Wall Street Journal; Indecision 2008


Bill Adair
Politifact.com; St. Petersburg Times


Alberto Ibargüen
Knight Foundation


Sree Sreenivasan
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; WNBC-TV


Eric Deggans
St. Petersburg Times "The Feed" blog


Eric Deggans and Aaron Barnhart
St. Petersburg Times/The Feed, Kansas City Star/TVBarn.com


Howard Finberg
NewsU


Dave Jones
The New York Times


Pete Hamill
New York Daily News; The Drinking Life


Chuck Shepherd
News of the Weird






Copyright 2008 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Subscribe to Mr. Media's RSS/XML Feed

Get MR. MEDIA Interviews delivered by email! Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Related articles by Zemanta

• Rupert Murdoch Vs. FCC In Battle To Control New York Media - And Wage War Against The New York Times
• Reclusive Boa-Wearing Millionaire Online For One Night Only [The Internets]
• "If It's Bad For 'Journalism' It's Bad For My Business"
• Morning Reading List, 05.08.08
• This just in: Newspapers not dead yet
• Execs Admit There's a Problem
• Osborn Elliott, Father of Newsweek's Rebirth, Dies at 83
• FishbowlIndia Anyone?

Howard Finberg, POYNTER INSTITUTE, NEWSU.org director of interactive learning: Mr. Media Radio Interview

You may not know my guest today by name, but it’s safe to say that if you read an English-language newspaper anywhere in the world, Howard Finberg is having at least an indirect effect on its content.

Finberg is Director of Interactive Learning for NewsU, the online training and education arm of The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. That’s where I am today, in fact.

NewsU has enjoyed explosive growth since opening its virtual doors on April 11, 2005. Starting with just a few courses and little more than word of mouth advertising, the mostly free training for journalists now has thirty-five courses and 35,000 registered users.

In the interest of complete disclosure, I have often worked on assignment for The Poynter Institute and even wrote two white papers and the script for an animated video for NewsU. In fact, I wrote the following Dr. Seuss-inspired rhyme, which Howard himself recorded for NewsU:

You can do it wearing a hat.
You can do it with your cat.
You can do it at night,
And you can do it when you look afright.
You can do it when things are slow,
Or when you can’t get the creative juices to flow.
You can do it when mother’s not there,
And you can do it in your underwear.

BOB ANDELMAN:Howard, thanks for taking the time to talk.

HOWARD FINBERG:Glad to be here, Bob, and thanks for reminding me of why we don’t use that rhyming any more. The whole idea of underwear is just more than we can take.

ANDELMAN:I remember doing that and being very surprised that some of that actually made it into the final. Howard, can you give us kind of a brief synopsis of NewsU’s mission within Poynter?

FINBERG:Well, our mission is to extend our training and our teaching from Poynter to the universe that can’t get to the Institute itself for what we call an in-person seminar, so our desire is to reach those people who may not be ready to come to a Poynter seminar, who may not have the money to come to a Poynter seminar. And frankly, to reach people who might not be journalists and who would not qualify to come to Poynter. NewsU training is open to everybody. All you need to do is register. It’s free. It’s very accessible because the amount of time you spend on it is really up to you, and most of the things we do are very short.

ANDELMAN:So you’re open to non-journalists.

FINBERG:We welcome non-journalists. We think the skills that we offer training in are perfect for bloggers, for people who are running Web sites, for anybody who is interested in getting their writing sharper.





ANDELMAN:Would it be useful for someone who is actually being covered by the media, for them to understand maybe how things work? Could they learn that from it?

FINBERG:Well, you certainly can learn how a newspaper operates in the different departments. We have something called “Anatomy of a Newspaper.” If you’re a PIO at a police department, I would recommend you take “Covering Cops,”which is a great module in understanding how journalists need to cover the cops, and, in turn, it’s a way of if you’re a public information officer looking at the perspective from the journalist.

ANDELMAN:Do you have a lot of students taking the courses?

FINBERG:We have a good number of students. About 12 to 15 percent of our registered users are identified as college students, and there is a much smaller percentage who are over-achieving high school students.

ANDELMAN:And let’s come back to the journalists. I mean, why would a journalist choose to take an online course?

FINBERG:Well, I am going to give you back our motto, which is: the best journalists never stop learning. So if you are a journalist, you are always hungry to improve your understanding of the world around you and your craft. Given the turmoil in the industry, I would say it’s also a matter of job survival to be as good as you possibly can be, to really sharpen your job skills.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW!

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.