>Colleges keep turning out optimistic print journalists despite the newspaper industry crunch (Ventura County Star)
(Via Romenesko)
Preface: I’m a bit confused about why a newspaper, as opposed to a trade journal, would write a 2,500-word story about how journalism students feel about their prospects in the newspaper industry. Seriously, do readers care even half as much about this navel-gazing stuff as we seem to think they do? I don’t get it.

That aside, there’s a cracking quote in the story from Conrad Fink, professor of journalism and director of the University of Georgia’s Cox Institute for Newspaper Management in Atlanta, about the students in his undergraduate newspaper management and strategy program:

“They see this revolutionary change that we’re in now as simply a matter of course. I find them looking forward to helping write the new business model of the newspaper industry,” said Fink, the author of nine journalism textbooks and a former executive vice president of Park Communications, an East Coast newspaper and broadcast company. “I find them intrigued with the online dimensions of the industry.

“I don’t see the fear and trepidation that so many of us in the older newspaper generation feel with this kind of change.”

That excitement and lack of fear characterizes most of the younger people I know who already work in the industry, too. Trouble is, too many newspaper companies and individual newsrooms are managed by charter members of the “fear and trepidation” club. Not all companies or papers, but many, if not most.

Will those excited, visionary young newspaper optimists who are so excited about putting their stamp on the future of our industry even get the chance? They can write either the new business model of the newspaper industry, or they can write its obituary. If we want it to be the former, we need to get more flexible and less bureaucratic. Fast. We need to streamline our management structures, flatten that org-chart wedding cake and ensure that everyone is working, not just “supervising.”

Most of all, we need to elevate the value of new ideas, even if it comes at the expense of some sacred cows and our traditional measures of performance. If you’re a manager still dealing out big raises to your centerpiece specialist or foreign correspondent while your innovators and idea-generators get stuck with the cost of living adjustment every year, it’s time to rethink whether you really belong in this business.