Reviews

Bill Rogers, executive director for the S.C. Press Association

Myrtle Beach area editor Michael Smith has recently published a 215-page book titled “Confessions of a Community Journalist.”
The book is a how-to guide to take some of the trial and error out of working for a community newspaper.
It is written not from the text-book approach of a college professor, but from that of an award-winning weekly editor.
Smith does a great job of offering coping skills on emphasizing local news coverage while dealing with the multi-tasking that comes with the territory of working for a community paper.
“Despite what editors at metro dailies and wire services may think,” he writes, “community journalists are not the bottom of the heap….we do it all.”
Smith starts with a good chapter on planning then goes on to cover topics that include reporting, photography, writing, design and digital reporting.
I wish I had had this book when I left a daily to run a weekly in West Virginia. Lots of information here.
Smith is editor of the award-winning Carolina Forest Chronicle.

Ed Henninger, design expert and director of Henninger Consulting:

If Michael has anything to “confess” in this book, it’s that he’s been hiding his light under a basket for far too long. I’ve known Michael—and followed his work—for more than a few years now and I’m happy to see he is taking the bold step of sharing his first-hand knowledge with other community journalists.

Michael is passionate about his craft and has done the hard work needed to become a community journalist, in the best sense of the phrase.

His book is well organized, crafted and brightly written. It is informed by learning and guided by experience. I’m happy to recommend it to others.

Dave Smith, Carolina Forest resident

I know the author personally, and can attest to his hard work and sincerity. His journalistic skills have quietly and successfully spurred community activism and growth. This is actually a reporter’s handbook, suitable for any journalist. I found it to be a great read, written at a person-to-person level, guiding the budding student or practitioner. This would make a great high school text as the basis for yearbook and high school newspaper preparation.

Bauman Book Reviews:

Most of us have heard the phrase “Never judge a book by its cover.” But I do. I also judge by the book title and genre. I have never been one to read non-fiction books. The remind me of school, and I don’t want to be reminded of school when I am out for the summer. So, when Michael contacted me requesting a review for his book, I agreed but was also thinking, “What did I just get myself into?” I thought I was going to be bored, and it would take me forever to get through, but I was hoping he would prove me wrong.

When I opened the file on my Nook and began reading, my reaction was – WOW. I was completely hooked. From the very first page. It took me a little less than two days to complete.

Michael writes to inform. He infuses his personal experience from over a decade in the journalism business, and also uses examples from others as well. He doesn’t claim to know everything about the profession, and includes the fact that he is still learning himself, because things change every day. His aim with this book wasn’t to give an all-inclusive guide to the art of community journalism, but rather (as it seemed to me) his purpose was to create a handbook that was short and sweet. He doesn’t drag on about a subject until it runs dry, leaving the reader begging for the section to be over. He includes a very organized mix of information and examples to help the reader understand what he is trying to say.

The sections are not very long, which make them easy to reference from day to day, and there is also a very useful table of contents at the beginning. You will be able to find what you are looking for without hassle.

Michael’s writing style in this book seemed informal, which is what this type of book needs. Having too formal of a tone will turn readers away right from the beginning. Instead, he takes a more laid-back approach and doesn’t make his opinions appear as facts. He states that some writers, photographers, designers, etc. have different styles than he does, and he doesn’t put down their techniques.

This book is very informative and encompasses a large range of different things a community writer will have to go through. He doesn’t go into long, hard to read details as I mentioned before. So, I believe this is a must-read for anyone going into the journalism field, or even that is already in the journalism field. It is always nice to have a reference book, and since this book isn’t very long, I would suggest just keeping it in a desk drawer and note the pages that you use often.

I give this book a 5/5 and I hope to see it used in Journalism classes in the future.

Personal note: I prefer the use of the pen tool rather than the lasso to cut out images, but what works for one designer doesn’t always work for another!

Dr. James Broderick, assistant professor of English and journalism at New Jersey City University:

An old joke – apologies if you’ve heard it: if you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion.

What was once true of economists is now true of journalists: no two seem to be able to agree on just where journalism went wrong – or if it did – and what needs to happen to fix it. Nor is there any agreement on what the demise of the printed newspaper might mean to the profession – or our society – and whether news organizations should charge for content on line or keep giving it away for free. There’s also a wide-ranging debate about whether media companies should return to “serious news” – a la Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO series “The Newsroom” – or continue to give readers the feather-weight, inoffensive, “info-tainment” that’s become a staple for many broadcasts and much of what passes for news these days.

There’s simply no consensus – well, almost no consensus. The only thing most people in the field can seem to agree on is the likely continued growth of “community journalism,” seen increasingly as perhaps the only bright spot in the ever-dimming landscape of profits and readership. While major metro daily newspapers continue to struggle, there is growth in the local sector, from long-standing community weeklies to hyper-local websites like Patch and other neighborhood-based spin-offs.

Given the importance of community journalism to the future of the information economy, it’s surprising that the field hasn’t garnered more attention from the various journalistic braintrusts. There are only a handful of genuinely useful, comprehensive guides to the practice of community journalism. Adding his voice to the hopefully growing genre is Michael Shawn Smith, with his Confessions of a Community Journalist.

Smith doesn’t claim that his book is the end all-be all of community journalism, but rather a collection of practical tips from someone who has been successful in the field for the past decade. Smith’s pragmatic approach, rooting his ideas in day-to-day practice, gives his book credibility. What he advises community journalists to do is, mostly, sound advice. The book, however, varies from most other texts in the field with its emphasis on design and photography, and a thoroughly underwhelming consideration of writing-related issues.

For example, the chapters on photography and design go deeply into specific techniques, from F-stops to the intricacies of layout programs like Quark. Smith gives pages and pages of technical advice on how to get the best pictures and how to lay out pages (though, God Bless him, he still advocates the old-fashioned use of hand-drawn page dummies – a man after my own heart). Yet his chapter on how to write news or features is almost laughable. Any community journalist looking for guidance regarding how to structure a lead, use transitions, incorporate quotes, follow various models like the so-called “inverted pyramid,” or any of the other nuts-and-bolts of building a story will be mostly on his own. Likewise his discussion of interviewing, which is a critically important skill that gets only passing consideration in the book. It seems pretty clear that Smith spends a lot more of his work day worrying about the look of his pages rather than their editorial content.

His discussion, however, of how to integrate social media into an overall approach to community reporting is superb. Any reporter struggling with Facebook and Twitter, wondering how to use these burgeoning tools to reach readers, will find much valuable advice from Smith. Valuable also are his tips on filing Freedom of Information requests, a potentially thorny area that Smith navigates with admirable clarity.

When Smith ventures into what might be termed “philosophical” areas, such as his discussion of “Community vs. Corporate” (which he frames as an undeclared battle between the honest and heartfelt reporting of civic-minded local reporters vs. the heartless grind of daily metro newspapers and hit-and-run television opportunists), he makes some points that many journalists will find objectionable. He seems to believe that community journalism is, somehow, more noble, or more conducive to serving the public. My experience in the field suggests the opposite is just as often the case: many community journalists are hamstrung in their ability to pursue the truth, unable (or unwilling) to report on scandal, corruption, or malfeasance due to their need to maintain friendly ties with their sources. To put it another way, you can’t run an expose about a ticket-writing scandal in the local police department and still expect the police chief to make time for you each week to go through the police blotter. If you’re a community journalist and you attack the local school board for approving no-show contracts, good luck getting the board secretary to return your phone calls. I wish Smith had addressed more thoughtfully this very real tension that almost all community journalists face. His version of the profession sometimes veers dangerously close to the distinctly dissimilar field of pubic relations.

Yet, it’s not philosophy that most community reporters need to worry about, and for those matters that will consume their day-to-day work life, Smith offers an abundance of useful information. This book will be helpful to anyone in the field. Given the rapid changes going on in journalism, no one is really sure what model will eventually emerge, but most likely the core mission – and the set of skills Smith addresses – will still play a role. As another old joke goes, “Why did God create economists?” Answer: “To make weather forecasters look good.” Hopefully, journalists will continue to have more credibility than that, and books like Smith’s should help ensure that’s the case.