The witification and wisdomization of Rob Curley

It's gotta be painful, if not impossible, for many traditional newspaper folk to listen to convergence guru, Rob Curley, talk about the future of journalism.

Let alone understand him.

The 35-year-old director of New Media and Convergence for the Naples and Bonita (Fla.) Daily News, brought his traveling one-man Powerpoint show to Northeast Ohio recently.

He spoke to business and media leaders at an Akron Roundtable luncheon and later spent 85 minutes talking to journalism and mass communication students and faculty at nearby Kent State University.

He left folks much like he leaves them everywhere in his wake: energized and mesmerized, or dazed and bewildered.

The former director of New Media/Convergence at the Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World (http://ljworld.com) is a creative and futuristic thinker, an award-winning Web designer, and a serious threat to any newspaper editors just now trumpeting their moves to 18-hour newsrooms.

His newspaper is alive with video, audio, photo galleries, podcasts, blogs, reader feedback and interaction, and the latest venture, Studio 55, the paper's news vodcast.

New Jargon for New Media

He’s also not the easiest person to understand, employing Curley-speak to explain his views on online and multi-platform journalism.

New Jargon (to accompany New Media) flows from his lips, viz., “webification,” “internization,” “hyper-localism,” or something close to those.

Seemingly, most of his vocabulary is interchangeable as verbs or nouns, i.e., “webify" (to add Web values such as audio or video to stories), “webifier” (one who webifies a story), and “webification” (the process of webifying).

To get much of the grunt information-gathering done, you use internation or you internize (read, you get low paid interns/foot soldiers to do it). We guess that would be to internify the newsgathering process.

It seems like it's all for the emerging Google Generation. For most of us, It’s jargonification amokified.

But, He's Spot On

The guy might talk fast and irritate Webster, but he’s got most of this stuff nailed.

Seeds of wisdom he probably leaves with all his audiences:

• News is spelled l-o-c-a-l. Or, L-O-C-A-L! Actually, Curley's term is "hyper-local" coverage. And, much of his softer news coverage (sports, entertainment) is intense. We're talking about running a calendar with every local third grade Christmas program listed; an up-to-date database where you can find the current batting average of 6-year-old tee-ball star Betsy Jones; or a clickable seating chart of a 16,000-seat arena with a photographic view from each seat.
• News – actually all information – on the websites of Curley’s newspapers also must be repurposed for downloads to iPods and cell phones. Reporters blog and interview each other about news coverage. Podcasting and vodcasting are as common in Naples as the Cleveland Browns selecting busts in the first round of the NFL draft.
• A news organization should "build community through technology," Curley says. Lots of staff, ownership commitment and resources help a lot here we would guess.
• Lots of geek power is needed. Curley's sites are labor intensive and database driven. Interns gather the minute details; computer programmers nerdify it. Animators and graphic artists "ESPN-it."
• Newsrooms should experience "organic convergence." That is, situate online, print and broadcast reporters not by medium, but by beat.
• "Backpack" journalism -- one reporter covers event with notepad, still and video cameras and writes stories for TV, print and Web -- will never work. He invited his competitors to send lots of these "mobile journalists" (MOJOs) down to Naples. "What you normally end up with, instead of one good story, are three crappy ones," he chuckles.
• He only works with non-union newspapers. "I have no idea how these concepts would work on a unionized paper," he declared.

Not surprisingly, Curley had other interesting wisdomifications.

Next blog: Curley says most college journalism students should "bitch to their deans."

Fred Endres, Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Kent State University