John Kelso: "Not a fan of Hitler"

I went and saw John Kelso's presentation during Mass Comm Week. As a humor columnist and writer for the Statesman for 35 years, Kelso had a lot to say about writing for the paper, and a lot of insight about the print media industry.

His advice about writing a column was pretty straightforward; keep up with current events, try to keep your articles locally relevant if possible, try not to get upset when an editor messes with your stuff, keep your writing clear and concise--good advice for the many freshmen and high schoolers present, but nothing I hadn't really heard before.

I found his musings on the future of print media a bit more interesting. It seems professionals and analysts have been predicting the death of print media for years, and Kelso is no exception. He believes columnists like himself will get the axe first as revenue declines, and other staff members' roles will be consolidated--even now, he says he's got to get the print column out as well as keeping up with the online version. Other writers update their Twitter accounts and link to tons of other sources online--print media is becoming more demanding in ways that have nothing to do with print.  Even the New York Times, he believes, will abandon its print edition altogether in a few years' time.

He also doesn't think pay-as-you-read models being adopted by some online news sites will last, simply because you can probably find whatever they've got to say for free at another site.

All in all, there wasn't very much useful technical information for me, but Kelso's session was entertaining nonetheless.