From the Newsroom to the Classroom: Ryan Thornburg
29 November 2007
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A few weeks ago I reached out to some journalists I know who have made the transition from newsrooms to classrooms. First up was Retha Hill, who left BET.com for Arizona State University. This week, I’ll share what Ryan Thornburg had to say.
Ryan is an assistant professor at UNC-Chapell Hill, where he is helping the journalism school integrate new media throughout its curriculum as well as teaching a couple of classes of his own. He also the former managing editor of usnews.com and CQ.com. Ryan and I worked together at washingtonpost.com, where he led the Politics team.
How long were you in journalism and why did you make the transition out of the newsroom and into the classroom?
I hope I still am in journalism, at least as much as a physician at a teaching hospital is still in medicine. But I was in newsrooms for 10 years. I made the transition because there’s a great untapped opportunity for journalism schools to be on the cutting edge of tapping that opportunity. And, on a personal note, my wife grew up in Chapel Hill and we both received our undergrad degrees here. With our young family, it was a great opportunity to live near family and friends.
What are the biggest challenges facing journalism schools?
It’s probably not the same for all journalism schools, but I’d say one of the first big issues is attracting the university’s best and brightest students — those who are intrigued and excited about this historic moment in democracy and communication. Not all of the best journalists, after all, come out of journalism schools. Why not? Most schools also probably face issues not unlike the industry — funding, speed to innovation, cross-departmental collaboration, generational change in personnel.
What advice do you have for new graduates trying to get their first
new media job?
Understand your prospective employer’s needs with great specificity, then be able to clearly describe how you fill that need. The biggest need I see right now is for people who understand data-driven online journalism. There’s also a need for people with strong copyediting skills and seasoned news judgment. And a need for beat reporters who just really love reporting and who are adept at working in a variety of media and formats.
Choose your first job as carefully as your pocketbook allows. Seek the ability to work with a good editor in a shop that has demonstrated real commitment — not just jargon — to online operations. And be sure that commitment is motivated mostly by a positive vision and not just fear — OK, maybe a little fear. Commitment to online operations does not mean cutting staff at the print operation, and it does not mean asking fewer people to do more work at lower quality.
Ask smart questions that help you understand how the organization’s audience is responding to their innovations online.
What are the biggest challenges facing online newsrooms?
Irrelevant and boring stories. Same as all news media.
Do you see any potential for online newsrooms to partner with journalism schools? If so, what are the possibilities?
Oh, huge. Research, development and continuing education.
Research: Understanding more about audience behavior and preferences. Understanding more about credibility and trust online. Developing standards of ethics and models of leadership. One way that journalism schools could be helpful immediately is helping newsrooms define success for their online projects, and developing techniques for learning from failure. We have all this new ability to measure performance, but there’s no real agreement going in to most projects on what metrics will define success. Newsroom constituencies spend too much time seeking evidence to support their position about whether a project “worked” or not. Academics are in a perfect position to be a neutral third party that defines goals, measures activity and articulates lessons learned. Newsrooms are not — and shouldn’t be — equipped to do that kind of navel gazing.
Development: Schools can develop editorial products before there is a market to support them. In fact, schools should help figure out how and whether markets will support concepts such as “journalism is a conversation, not a lecture.” They should help figure out how news organizations can use Facebook and the iPhone. The development role is an editorial, technical and business collaboration — and the best j-schools will figure out how to work across departments to make it happen.
Continuing Education: Our graduates’ skills are becoming outdated so fast that we probably should put them on some sort of service plan. (Hey, now there’s a money-making idea.) On the other hand, the values that we teach our graduates are eternal. Writing for a general audience. Legal and ethical guidelines. Brevity. Precision. Accuracy. Curiosity. Fairness. Journalism schools should also be reaching out to the burgeoning field of amateur journalists and providing resources for them to obtain a grounding in these values.
How is teaching different from or similar to what you were doing in
the newsroom?
After a semester in, I barely know what I don’t know.
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