To: National Advisory Board
From: Karen Brown Dunlap
Re: Year-End Report 2005
Cc: Poynter Trustees
Sometimes the best way to tell a story is to start at the end.
The story of Poynter in 2005 drew to an end on Friday, December 16, in a community college classroom in Gulfport, Mississippi. About 20 journalists, including news directors, editors, reporters, and photojournalists, told the kind of stories that journalists like to tell. They talked about reporting in spite of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, of staying on the air, getting the newspaper out, of rallying communities and of a reader who brought eight cakes to a newsroom when the winds subsided.
The group in Mississippi and a similar one in New Orleans talked with Poynter faculty and staff about lessons learned in craft, they reflected on the meaning of public service journalism and listened to those who have covered the rebuilding of communities. Mike Jacobs, publisher and editor of the Grand Forks Herald, recalled the aftermath of flooding in North Dakota. Buddy Martin, editor of the Charlotte Sun, told lessons learned after Hurricane Charlie slammed southwest Florida.
Along the way the group discussed the things journalists don’t talk about. They told of ongoing headaches and sleepless nights, of using drugs — over-the-counter drugs, of course — and dealing with the guilt of having a home and job when so many lost everything. One person kept asking about 2006. What will the next storm season bring?
These groups came together because of Poynter. Most said they hadn’t had time to stop and talk about their work or the effect that the storm was having on them. Members of the group in Biloxi/Gulfport and the larger group in New Orleans thanked Poynter and the Dart Center for coming to them.
We ended the year by reaching out, by doing what we could and should do. But that really wasn’t the end of the year. On Wednesday, Dec. 28, subscriber number 10,000 signed up for courses on NewsU. In one year this program has grown to roughly 10 times the number of journalists who visit Poynter’s campus each year.
The two programs present very different examples of Poynter work. NewsU is open to anyone who chooses to use it. Our work in the Gulf was for journalists, most of them selected by a supervisor. NewsU is distance learning involving only a name and some registration data while the Gulf sessions were close and sometimes very personal. E-learning is self-directed at the user’s place and pace. The Gulf work was more typical: a set time and place with group leaders.
We ended the year with two extremes of learning with both methods serving journalists. Both advance Poynter’s mission and showcase the range of our teaching. The two remind us of how we’re changing.
The end of the year doesn’t tell the whole story of 2005. While we could reach out to teach and encourage in the Gulf, we struggled to reach the thousands of journalists in distress in 2005. It was another year of ethical lapses and questionable conduct including acts by big name journalists and news organizations, and another year of reader/audience decline and of significant ownership changes and expected changes. We did our part to teach, coach, question and encourage. We wish we could have done more.
As we begin 2006 we look back on areas of celebration, matters of concern and goals for this year.
The Best of 2005
We celebrate the following:
- Strong teaching across the curriculum
The heart of our work is teaching in curriculum programs, and that seems to have been successful. Evaluations from 57 programs and comments by those who practice what they learned point to good work in our core area. Attendance also suggested confidence in our work. In a year of increased tuition we cancelled only two programs because of low enrollment. - Solid outreach through Poynter Online and NewsU
The numbers keep increasing. A wide range of users tell us the programs are valuable. We experimented with more sophisticated designs, methods for quicker responses to issues, and approaches to present Poynter on-site events to broader audiences. In the process we serve world-wide. - Valuable contributions to the industry in other forms
Much of our work continues to include speaking at news media events, teaching in conventions and workshops, consulting in newsrooms, commenting on media topics, and coaching by phone or e-mail. The volume is high. We hear our teaching quoted and see our material used broadly. We’re having a useful effect. - Engage industry leaders
For years we’ve talked at NAB meetings about how to engage industry leaders. This year we began a Community Forum and the initial guest was Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the New York Times Company. We continued in the second year of a special program for leaders at The Boston Globe. We had multiple contacts with NBC news executives and a special message from the evening anchor of CBS News. Individual faculty worked with leaders at the Washington Post, NBC News, the Miami Herald and the St. Petersburg Times. Program attendance by senior news executives increased. We made progress in our goal to help the industry by working with its leaders. - Useful processes for COE re-accreditation and Strategic Planning
Roy Peter Clark led the Institute in the every five-year re-accreditation process. It was a model of full-institute involvement without overtaxing our primary work. The results were commendations from the COE visiting team and the anticipation of re-accreditation. Butch Ward was the internal consultant leading our strategic planning. He worked with the administration, faculty and staff in crafting a challenging yet practical document. - Stronger ties with our local community
Over the years Poynter has been best known in Tampa Bay as a place that offers summer writing programs for secondary students. This year the broader community came to Poynter for three community forums. (Two were Poynter events. We also were the site for the local PBS station to present Jim Lehrer.) Hundreds visited our building as part of the St. Petersburg Times Reading Festival and for various meetings of civic groups. This came about after we revisited our policies for outside groups. (To serve the growing number of guests, we start the year with a new set of restrooms closer to the large pavilions.) - A healthier internal culture
You could say we were literally healthier in 2005 as one staffer returned after a nagging disability. We had injured staff members but not the number of major injuries and illnesses that we had in 2004. The work environment is also improving as a number of folks settle into new roles and we all settle into new realities. - An uptick in resources
Development returns are up. We were awarded new grants, chief of which is a two-year grant for $250,000 from the Ford Foundation. It will underwrite programs in ethics and provide scholarships for journalists from ethnic media. We changed the financial structure of our summer program and the participant base held strong. Scholarships from the St. Petersburg Times Foundation helped most of the students. All of these factors and others helped us in ending the year under budget.
Concerns
The major concerns listed here overlap with “The Big Questions for NAB” included in this mailing. Concerns are as follows:
- We’re doing good things. Are we doing the right things to serve journalists and media leaders, particularly in this time of change and stress?
- Will journalism organizations support training in 2006?
- Is Poynter on track to capitalize on a number of business opportunities without undermining our mission or damaging our reputation?
Goals for 2006
We want to:
- Make a significant difference in journalism by constantly improving our curriculum offerings and the execution of programs.
- Use Poynter Online and NewsU to enlarge our effect by helping journalists, quasi-journalists, and by helping citizens better understand journalism.
- Begin the research on an Eyetrack study that guides visual journalists in online and newspaper design, and provides additional insight into the reading habits of news consumers.
- Provide more comprehensive and useful information to journalists on changes in the industry and what it takes for them to make a difference.
- Move forward on all steps in the Strategic Plan.
- Better utilize Poynter’s resources to increase revenue.
Let me end with one more look back at 2005. How does Poynter really measure success? This year we will explore better means of assessment, but right now we’re still tied to program evaluations and stories. Stories tell us when we’ve succeeded or missed the mark. I’ll end with a story, or a column, that was published on the last day of 2005. It says a lot about journalism and a word about Poynter.
Excerpts from a column by Stan Tiner, vice president and executive editor of the (Biloxi) Sun Herald.
A lifetime of preparing for the story of a lifetime
The role of public service in journalism has never hit closer to home
EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
12.31.05
In the days since the storm we have been up to our elbows in this story. We are energized by it, we are exhausted by it, but we cannot quit. This is the story of our communities, our families, our friends; it is our story too, the most personal we will ever know.
Recently a group of talented and caring leaders in journalism came to our Coast to help us. Faculty members from The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., and from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma in Seattle, Wash., came to help us think through the Katrina coverage and also to help us deal with the human and personal consequences of what we were doing.
Gregory Favre, a native of Bay St. Louis and one of the most gifted and compassionate editors I have known, addressed Sun Herald and other journalists from Gulf Coast news organizations: “This was the kind of story you pray you never have to chronicle. But from all I have read and heard, you did it honorably and courageously, in the finest tradition of journalism, and made us proud. People desperately needed to read and hear your words and view your pictures, on all the platforms available.
“They needed places where they could come together with others to share their grief and their fears and their tears, places where they could join in a communion of feeling, places that were islands of news and information in the middle of a sea of rumors.
“You gave them that place to come together. You gave it to them, even though many of you had no homes to return to, no clothes to change into, no time to shed your own tears.”
The Sun Herald staff has buoyed their old editor in these days — reminding me so well of my earliest thought about what I might be when I grew up and why I wanted to be a journalist.
Journalist — it is a word that is reviled and said in scorn by some but in these last horrible months of reporting from the ruins of our beautiful Coast and observing the work of these reporters, editors and photographers I find that I am proud to be their colleague, to be a journalist.
