In part one of this interview, Marissa Gamache, a reporting intern in Arlington, Virginia who'll spend her senior year of college at Maynooth University in Ireland before graduating from Bethel University, spoke to me about how her generation sees the current state and the future of journalism. Marissa and I work on the same publication, Transport Topics, right now. Following is a lightly edited transcript of that recent conversation.
....
I see myself and my parents' generation more connected than the one in between the two of us.
What do you mean?
I look at it as 10-year gaps, instead of Generation X or Z or whatever, or millennials. I think the values my parents had -- as well as those of persons in their 30s or late 20s -- are even different than those of the kids who are 18-25, 16- 28, and I think that's because right now it's the thirtysomethings who are starting to push all their ideals and all of their ingenuity. I think that when we come up in the next 10 years, we're going to push our platform which I think is going to be bringing us back to our roots.
I hope so!
Which is VHS tapes, and Nintendo and things like that.
Mortar and tablet, quill pens!
Exactly. (laughs)
Really old school! (laughs)
So I think journalism will go back to more of a journal-ism field.
I want to make sure I understand - your parents would be in their 40s?
50s.
So you are seeing more changes incrementally in 10-year spurts rather than in bigger spurts, like between you and I.
Yes, there is so much change -
Seemingly every month.
Yes, and I'm just at the bottom of millennials, when I was born, I'm second to last in that age group. I'm significantly different in what I'm looking for with a path for journalism.
Interesting. So it sounds like you are still optimistic about journalism. What do you think journalists who studied in the age of typewriters to become professionals, such as myself, don't understand about modern journalism?
I think they don't understand you have to change on a month by month basis, whether it be your audience you're targeting, or your style of writing, or the things you think are important that you're writing. You have to think about what's important based on your readers, and if you don't, that's when you start losing readership right away.
Hmm. But let me focus in on that 'style of writing'; that's an interesting point. We all know journalists should be on one side, and then advertising on the other, right?
Mmm-hmm.
You're not supposed to worry so much about page views, but in reality we are and that seems like something that is also really changing. What do you mean about changing style of your writing?
I think that even the language. I think a lot of times people don't understand -- Older people talk in a way that is more informative, and in language that is more detailed and in-depth with a vocabulary that is robust. I think that in order to target younger people or a larger audience you have to continue to change that vocabulary and refresh it, so people can understand and make connections to their daily life, even though it's different.
Hmm. Interesting, that's an interesting perspective. What's your feeling about blogging and how seriously do you take bloggers? Does it vary by the type of blogger?
(nods) I think blogging is really an emerging market and it has been for the last couple years, the last five to 10 years it's started to get bigger and bigger, but I think it's gotten to a point where so many people are trying to make their living off blogging and instead it's a great supplement to someone who's, say, really enthralled in the business field and they're an exec. I think that blogging really has a following and if the information is niche enough, or extravagant enough, people will be interested and a following definitely happens. And I love keeping up on things coming up, like with travel bloggers. I think it's so much fun to just take a peak --
Do you have a blog?
No, I've never been one to write personally about anything like myself, or just experiences, or just information I think people should know.
So where do you see the most opportunity for journalists right now?
I think the biggest opportunity - I think in multi-media journalism, which is looking at startup companies on even Youtube platforms, and others like, Slate has gotten popular - that
Tomi Lahren (a young conservative online video and TV host) who's got viral videos of her ranting on certain things. I think those will be the types of journalists most coveted, who can get up on Facebook Live and be reporting here, there, and kind of have a gamut of coverage.
I've had an article published on Slate; so are you talking about a certain aspect of Slate?
Their multi-media presence is huge. That sucks people in to following their website. ...I feel like news websites like Slate, if they can get a couple big faces that emerge, like young people in front of the camera, being in different areas.
What I hear from you is - and I'm so excited we've had this conversation because while I know a lot of this already, I've also learned a lot - it seems there's a big difference in how you've been learning journalism and how I learned it, which was to focus on the five Ws and one H. I'd like to think you still learned that?
Oh yeah!
So you're not saying that if your style changes, you're going to have to say 'I don't care when or why, I just care about the what and the how.'
Oh no. I'm saying that just how the composition of the story is, you stick to that. There's always the fundamentals. I think you have to keep up with the
trends of what's hip, what's getting 'likes', and views in terms of your writing.
But what concerns me and a lot of people is attention spans are getting shorter because of technology, and I noticed that The New York Times and Washington Post will want to communicate the main points so they'll do it with a slide show now. Video, with script across. It's as if to say, 'We know you can only focus for two seconds.'
Yeah, yeah! I think it kind of does a disservice to the work that goes into stories. I think people think they then understand an issue based on those five slides that are shown, and realistically, they have just scratched the surface of knowledge. I definitely think long-form journalism has a place, and I
think that it's online because no longer are people looking to just read a bunch of words, they want the pictures. It's like a picture book for adults; adults need those nowadays.
Hm, ok.
And so I definitely think there's a place for it (long-form journalism), but it's hard for someone to read 2,000 words unfortunately.
You said you hoped we'd revert to an earlier time. Do your parents have a newspaper subscription?
They have a daily subscription to the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis.
In part one of this interview, Marissa Gamache, a reporting intern in Arlington, Virginia who'll spend her senior year of college at Maynooth University in Ireland before graduating from Bethel University, spoke to me about how her generation sees the current state and the future of journalism. Marissa and I work on the same publication, Transport Topics, right now. Following is a lightly edited transcript of that recent conversation.
....
I see myself and my parents' generation more connected than the one in between the two of us.
What do you mean?
I look at it as 10-year gaps, instead of Generation X or Z or whatever, or millennials. I think the values my parents had -- as well as those of persons in their 30s or late 20s -- are even different than those of the kids who are 18-25, 16- 28, and I think that's because right now it's the thirtysomethings who are starting to push all their ideals and all of their ingenuity. I think that when we come up in the next 10 years, we're going to push our platform which I think is going to be bringing us back to our roots.
I hope so!
Which is VHS tapes, and Nintendo and things like that.
Mortar and tablet, quill pens!
Exactly. (laughs)
Really old school! (laughs)
So I think journalism will go back to more of a journal-ism field.
I want to make sure I understand - your parents would be in their 40s?
50s.
So you are seeing more changes incrementally in 10-year spurts rather than in bigger spurts, like between you and I.
Yes, there is so much change -
Seemingly every month.
Yes, and I'm just at the bottom of millennials, when I was born, I'm second to last in that age group. I'm significantly different in what I'm looking for with a path for journalism.
Interesting. So it sounds like you are still optimistic about journalism. What do you think journalists who studied in the age of typewriters to become professionals, such as myself, don't understand about modern journalism?
I think they don't understand you have to change on a month by month basis, whether it be your audience you're targeting, or your style of writing, or the things you think are important that you're writing. You have to think about what's important based on your readers, and if you don't, that's when you start losing readership right away.
Hmm. But let me focus in on that 'style of writing'; that's an interesting point. We all know journalists should be on one side, and then advertising on the other, right?
Mmm-hmm.
You're not supposed to worry so much about page views, but in reality we are and that seems like something that is also really changing. What do you mean about changing style of your writing?
I think that even the language. I think a lot of times people don't understand -- Older people talk in a way that is more informative, and in language that is more detailed and in-depth with a vocabulary that is robust. I think that in order to target younger people or a larger audience you have to continue to change that vocabulary and refresh it, so people can understand and make connections to their daily life, even though it's different.
Hmm. Interesting, that's an interesting perspective. What's your feeling about blogging and how seriously do you take bloggers? Does it vary by the type of blogger?
(nods) I think blogging is really an emerging market and it has been for the last couple years, the last five to 10 years it's started to get bigger and bigger, but I think it's gotten to a point where so many people are trying to make their living off blogging and instead it's a great supplement to someone who's, say, really enthralled in the business field and they're an exec. I think that blogging really has a following and if the information is niche enough, or extravagant enough, people will be interested and a following definitely happens. And I love keeping up on things coming up, like with travel bloggers. I think it's so much fun to just take a peak --
Do you have a blog?
No, I've never been one to write personally about anything like myself, or just experiences, or just information I think people should know.
So where do you see the most opportunity for journalists right now?
I think the biggest opportunity - I think in multi-media journalism, which is looking at startup companies on even Youtube platforms, and others like, Slate has gotten popular - that Tomi Lahren (a young conservative online video and TV host) who's got viral videos of her ranting on certain things. I think those will be the types of journalists most coveted, who can get up on Facebook Live and be reporting here, there, and kind of have a gamut of coverage.
I've had an article published on Slate; so are you talking about a certain aspect of Slate?
Their multi-media presence is huge. That sucks people in to following their website. ...I feel like news websites like Slate, if they can get a couple big faces that emerge, like young people in front of the camera, being in different areas.
What I hear from you is - and I'm so excited we've had this conversation because while I know a lot of this already, I've also learned a lot - it seems there's a big difference in how you've been learning journalism and how I learned it, which was to focus on the five Ws and one H. I'd like to think you still learned that?
Oh yeah!
So you're not saying that if your style changes, you're going to have to say 'I don't care when or why, I just care about the what and the how.'
Oh no. I'm saying that just how the composition of the story is, you stick to that. There's always the fundamentals. I think you have to keep up with the trends of what's hip, what's getting 'likes', and views in terms of your writing.
But what concerns me and a lot of people is attention spans are getting shorter because of technology, and I noticed that The New York Times and Washington Post will want to communicate the main points so they'll do it with a slide show now. Video, with script across. It's as if to say, 'We know you can only focus for two seconds.'
Yeah, yeah! I think it kind of does a disservice to the work that goes into stories. I think people think they then understand an issue based on those five slides that are shown, and realistically, they have just scratched the surface of knowledge. I definitely think long-form journalism has a place, and I think that it's online because no longer are people looking to just read a bunch of words, they want the pictures. It's like a picture book for adults; adults need those nowadays.
Hm, ok.
And so I definitely think there's a place for it (long-form journalism), but it's hard for someone to read 2,000 words unfortunately.
You said you hoped we'd revert to an earlier time. Do your parents have a newspaper subscription?
They have a daily subscription to the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis.
