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Month: July 2014
By Julie Poe
CHAPEL HILL — In a seminar on Tuesday, North Carolina professor Trevy McDonald urged students to explore new means of self-publishing.
The seminar was held on the same day that HarperCollins, a major publishing company, unveiled a new publishing website, ushering in a fresh conversation about the future role of e-books.
“What is a book?” McDonald asked the 12 students in her seminar. “That’s not as easily defined anymore. And that’s a good thing, because it opens up the industry to so much talent that was untapped before.”
A recent study by the International Digital Publishing Forum found that e-book sales have grown tenfold since 2002. McDonald attributed this increased popularity to the low costs of online publishing, which causes e-books to be priced less than print books.
She said that companies such as Kindle publish e-books for free, while the typical cost for print self-publication ranges from $400 to $99,000. The costless production of an e-book means that authors can price their works at less than $10, which can become a more accessible price for a wider range of readers.
Another factor is the autonomy online publishing offers for new authors. Authors who self-publish are free from contractual obligations to a publishing company. This allows writers to make their own decisions on the content, cover and marketing of their books. The opportunity of greater autonomy inspired McDonald in 1999 to self-publish her first book, Time Will Tell, and found the publishing company Reyomi Global Media Group.
Since then, McDonald has found that online publishing offers a more dependable outlet for beginning authors to market their work. This dependability is also the main reason that HarperCollins cited for beginning a new website that provides a forum for authors to market their e-books to readers.
“We are excited to be able to offer an e-commerce solution to our authors, ensuring their books are always available to their fans,” chief digital officer Chantal Restivo-Alessi said in a statement on Tuesday. “As a publisher, we want to offer as many paths to the consumer as possible.”
Mainly, it is the accessibility of e-books that McDonald believes will keep them relevant in the future. She feels that the strength of e-books lies in the reader’s ability to use an e-reader to transport and access an unlimited library.
“Authors have to lead the charge into the digital age,” McDonald said. “Readers want instant access and they want to have everything at their fingertips, and e-books are simply the easiest way to do that.”
By Rachel Davis
The staff of The Daily Tar Heel is not only producing a print newspaper, but also online content.
The 10 students who contribute to The Daily Tar Heel publish daily articles on its website, print a 5-day-a-week newspaper during the school year and release a weekly newspaper over the summer. The merging of online news and print newspaper has been smooth, due to the advantages of both types of media for staff and audience.
Erica Perel, the students’ adviser and former staff member, joins the staff weekly to give them guidance. She credits the high quality content that the DTH produces as a reason for their continued success.
“We want to produce a print publication at the highest level while developing our online content.”
Perel referred to the staff as “digital natives,” emphasizing their talents in online design and computer skills.
The students enter with these proficiencies and in the process are taught journalism techniques.
“We pride ourselves on being able to teach you what you need to know,” Perel said.
Paige Ladisic, the managing editor, is also the online editor, transferring her skills in print publication onto the Web.
“We’ve done well with adapting to the [online] culture,” Ladisic said. The DTH’s site, along with the newspaper’s Twitter and Facebook feeds, is updated daily with breaking news stories from around UNC-Chapel Hill.
The DTH’s website is not only accessible to students, but to anyone with an interest in the UNC-Chapel Hill community.
“It’s expanded who can read us,” Perel said. Students studying abroad, parents of students and UNC-Chapel Hill alumni can remain informed long-distance.
A larger audience leads to more responsibility for the newspaper staff. They now have the ability to immediately inform their audience about any developing stories. There is no need to wait for next week’s print issue when the latest news will be uploaded online in a matter of hours.
Online media is both convenient and economical for the DTH, which is financially independent. Students rely entirely on donations and advertising to fund the paper, making the cost of printing a concern. The website costs nothing in comparison to the price of printing 17,000 newspapers.
The DTH, now in its 121st year of publication, has been operating online for the last 20 years, making it one of the frontrunners in online-based news. The staff and their adviser remain confident in its expansion.
“We’re making online connections,” Perel said. “People want to read it.”
By Karringtan Harris
While many people have become addicted to tweeting and retweeting, others believe it is a silly social networking site that causes more harm than good. Meredith Clark believes Twitter is the contemporary way to protest.
Clark, native to St. Louis, Missouri, has a B.A in Political Science, a M.S in Journalism, and is presently working on her Ph.D in Mass Communicaton. She became involved with the twittersphere when she noticed the growing focus on social media in the journalism world.
“New technology has come along and if I want to continue my mission I need to know what’s going on,” she said. “The same problems that are going on in print are going on with the digital work.”
While turning her focus to the digital aspect of Journalism, Clark discovered a group on Twitter named Black Twitter. Black Twitter is a group of people who use Twitter to talk about their beliefs and opinions about relevant events in society that concern the black community.
“I became interested in Black Twitter when I saw that other journalists had no clue what they were talking about, when they reported on ‘what black people do on Twitter’,” she said. “That realization spoke to my calling as a journalist –to give a wider more descriptive picture of personal experiences and perspectives of black people.”
Devoting her attention to the Black Twitter group she searched for a way to promote the organization and communicate what the organization stands for. She came up with the idea to apply the values of the holiday Kwanza to the Black Twitter organization.
“I wrote my dissertation on Black Twitter,” she said. “When I was looking for ways to explain what they were doing, I found that the values were the best way to explain that.” The values that Clark refers to are unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, creativity, purpose, and faith.
She chose to apply the holiday of Kwanza to Black Twitter because she believed the values helped unify the community. In Clark’s journalistic works she strives to accurately report on her community.
“Through my work I try to present pictures of African-Americans experiences that will help a wider audience better understand what it’s like to live as a black person in America,” she said. Clark believes that the black community cannot be simply confined in a tiny box.
“There’s no single definition, because there’s no single ‘black experience,’ ” she said. “Thus my work touches on a lot of different aspects of black life.”
By Bryant Chappell
“I just want to throw you in a room together and let the differences bring you together, not push you away.”
These are the words of Jan Yopp, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has also been there for 35 years. Yopp emphasizes the importance of diversity. “We have to accept that no two people are alike. In order to have a functional, peaceful, successful society, we have to drop our stereotypes and biases,” she said.
Yopp sees her own diversity reflected in her Swedish background, her political views and her Episcopalian religious views. Yopp, 65, clearly appreciates the differences of those around her, such as the way she grew up compared to the way many others today grow up.
“I grew up in Florida with my mom, dad, two brothers, and my sister. It’s not like today where you have many blended families, which I think makes it more interesting,” she said.
Yopp had the privilege of being good friends with someone who also appreciated diversity: Chuck Stone.
Stone was a prominent journalist throughout the Civil Rights movement and knew leaders such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. He was the editor of several African-American newspapers and was the first president of the National Association of Black Journalists. Yopp recalls that Stone showed his interest in diversity by wearing a pin in the shape of the United States that was a rainbow of various skin tones.
“Chuck had a wonderful sense of humor. He could poke fun at our various stereotypes and get away with it,” Yopp said. “He considered himself to be diverse because his mother was Creole and his father was African-American.” Because of this, Stone thought of himself as “orange.”
Yopp and Stone worked together from 1992 to 1995 in the Rainbow Institute. During this 3-week summer program, 15 diverse students from around the country explored the field of journalism.
When Chuck Stone retired, Yopp wanted to honor Stone for his legacy. To do this, she helped create the Chuck Stone Program for Diversity in Education and Media with the help of Monica Hill, the director of the Scholastic Media Association, and professors Napoleon and Queenie Byars. This program honors Stone by promoting journalism and celebrating diversity.
“The Rainbow Institute was created to promote racial and ethnic diversity in the newsroom, while the Chuck Stone Program promotes diversity through these but also through religious views, political views, and even socio-economic statuses,” Yopp added.
2014 marked the eighth year of the Chuck Stone Program, which is still going strong. Yopp continues to assist with the program and hopes that this is a learning experience for the twelve students attending.
“You all may not become journalists, but it will have an effect on your lives. Having you all changes our lives. It’s a lot of fun,” she said.