Mark Miller is an SMU alumnus and the editor for The Texas Tribune. (Photo Courtesy of The Texas Tribune )
Mark Miller, editor of The Texas Tribune and SMU alumnus, spoke to students during the O’Neil Lecture in Business Journalism on Monday about the changing world of journalism in the face of a perilous future for the press Monday.
Regarding the downfall of American media companies, Miller said. “They [media companies] were ailing for a reason, it was a structural reason, and it was probably irreparable.”
It was the collapse of these news companies that led Miller to make the transition from Newsweek to the editor position at the one-year old non-profit paper, The Texas Tribune.
He spoke about his experience in Newsweek during which a “traditional media company [battled] for its life [trying] to survive in a world in which all of the conventional models are failing.”
He explained to students and professors that The Texas Tribune was formed based upon ideas. Using other services and web-based news sites as models, he reinvented The Texas Tribune as a constantly updating the media website providing free information to its viewers.
“There are practically no good new ideas anywhere in the world; there’s only the appropriation of other people’s ideas and customizing them for your own use,” Miller said.
In this case, that means changes in layout and content providing viewers with streaming media and equal coverage using multimedia, slideshows, audio, video and traditional stories.
“We want to provide a greater level of insight and sunshine into the workings of government,” Miller said.
He explained aspects of the site that complete transcripts of current situations on Senate and house floors. His goal is to have these transcripts up in less than 24 hours.
“It took a fair amount of prodding to get them to give us access to the feed,” Miller said.
He also noted that people tend to gravitate toward media companies with political viewpoints that are similar to their own, noting that The Texas Tribune is nonpartisan.
The Tribune is partnered with multiple other media sources, including The New York Times. Articles taken directly from The Texas Tribune are published in The Times twice a week.
The anniversary of The Texas Tribune, Nov. 4, marked many milestones for the media outlet in terms of both profit and viewership.
“We completed year one with 23 million total page views, which was infinitely more than, I think, they had anticipated,” Miller said.
The Texas Tribune is a completely non-profit organization and uses donations as a means of revenue.
“Major gifts, which we define as $5,000 and above,” Miller said. “It’s kind of an NPR model.”
Those who donate are granted special benefits, which Miller admits, the company is still working out. They have so far made $8.2 million and are projected to make a total of $10 million by the end of 2011.
Miller emphasized the importance of multimedia and convergence, terms with which SMU journalism majors and business majors are very familiar.
“I’ll probably never buy a newspaper again,” Alex Lokken, a freshman business major, said.
Many are accustomed to this phrase in today’s changing world of media. According to Miller, many readers are reading news on the Internet, a switch that cannot be ignored.
“I don’t think we’re [The Texas Tribune] going away any time soon,” Miller said.
