crosbie
18 Alumni Instructing 18 Students
This week I’m in New York City sitting-in on a 39-hour (nearly non-stop for five-business days) course in which 18 alumni of my New Media Management master’s degree program at Syracuse University will teach 18 of my current students in the program. The 18 instructors this year from among the program’s more than 200 alumni: Edward Alcide, graduated in ’13, Media Manager, 605; Dylan Beyer, ’12, Brand Manager, Whiskey Division, Proximo Spirits; Robert Bierman, ’16, SVP, CBInsights, Founder Tiny World Media Brittany Campbell, ’10, Global Business Development Partnerships, Google; Ashley Christiano, ’11, Senior Marketing Manager, Reuters TV; Nick Cicero, ’10, CEO, Delmondo; Bethany Devendorf, ’12, Sales Engineer, GeoEdge; Lisa Dodd, ’15, Strategic Marketing and Development Manager ARK Investment Management; Andrea Jacob, Syracuse ‘10, Manager Business Operations, Viacom; Rania Kouadjia, ’16, Digital Account Manager, Complex Networks; Jennifer Krist, ’15, SEO Analyst, 2U; Nathan McAlone, ’15, Entertainment Editor, Business Insider; Edward W. McLaughlin, ’12 Manager, Integrated Planning, UM Worldwide; Lisa Scheinman, ’12, Product Manager, SIMMONS Research; Tom Staudt, ’13, President, ARK ETF Trust / Chief Operating Officer ARK Investments (a +$4 billion fund); Meghavaty Suresh, ’15, Director, Consumer Strategy, Guardian News & Media; Xiaowei Wang, ’15, Manager, Automated Solution, PadSquad; Sydney Yarnell, ’14, Digital Marketing Analyst, Stony Brook University; Shuai (Suya) Wang, ’14, Principal & Co-Founder, WestOeast (Toronto); If you’re one of my many Facebook friends in the media business whose company seeks talented holders of postgraduate degrees in New Media Management (a fully-accredited dual New Media/Business master’s degree from a major university), you won’t find that talent from schools. Contact Steve Masiclat or me.
My Family Ending 140 Years as Daily Newspaper Publishers
With nostalgia and some sadness, my family today announced that after 140 years, it’s leaving the newspaper business on May 1st. The daily Chronicle of Willimantic, Connecticut, founded by my step-great-great-grandfather John A. MacDonald in 1877, will be sold at the end of next month to Central Connecticut Communications, the owners of the New Britain Herald and the Bristol Press, two other Connecticut dailies. Following John MacDonald, my great-grandfather George Augustus Bartlett, grandfather G. Donald Bartlett, mother Lucy Bartlett Crosbie, brother Kevin Bartlett Crosbie, and my sister-in-law Patrice Pernaselli Crosbie have in turn, generally after the death of their predecessor, published the paper every day since that week when John founded it — during which Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, Chief Crazy Horse was fighting the U.S. cavalry, and President Ulysses Grant was ordering home the last federal troops occupying the former Confederate states. We have been the oldest newspaper family in New England. My father Arthur W. Crosbie was the newspaper’s general manager during the middle of the 20th Century. I worked there during the 1970’s, and had grown up in a multi-generational household where the news business and substance of newspaper editorials were dinner table conversation. When I started in the business, we still melted lead to make that day’s printing type (a slug of which, pictured above, I’ve kept from those days) and the newspaper received international and national news via rolls of one-inch (2.5 cm) wide paper tape punched in teletype code. Fire and police radio monitors sat besides our TV. The daily deadlines made it both a satisfying and frustrating occupation. One hard to let go. Yet Facebook friends who have known me as a news industry futurists/consultant from 1996 onward (and as well since 2008 as Syracuse University’s postgraduate instructor in the New Media Business) will know from my professional and trade journal writings and speeches during the past 15 years that newspaper publishing, with quite rare exceptions, is now an unsustainable business due to epochal changes in how and why people consume news, entertainment, and other information. Times change. Business life cycles end. And we’re closing our 140-year story. #