ASNE's Institute for Journalism Excellence, funded by a Knight Foundation grant, put 25 journalism professors into newspapers for seven weeks - including an orientation at the American Press Institute - to reconnect with the newsroom. Here are some of their thoughts on the experience.

Newsroom experience brought back the rush of reporting, but advertising and circulation taught me a lot about the business

By Nancy Day

"It's not as much fun as it used to be."

"You've been out of the newsroom too long to know what's really going on."

OK. I was willing to acknowledge that might be true, so I set off in the summer of 1996 to find out, as an Institute for Journalism Excellence Fellow, to put it grandly and officially, or, as my newspaper put it, an intern.

Despite the ballyhooed changes, the newsroom I encountered was not much different from those in which I worked in Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere.

It's a club. Men run it. The "public," including non-editorial employees of the paper, can't join.

Most of my six-week "newspaper attachment" was spent as a general assignment reporter on the Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News. As always, being a reporter is a great way to get to know a place fast. And it was still fun and exciting to have Page One stories, particularly one involving the polite woodsman robbery suspect, the bush pilot tipster, the two-time Iditarod champ and the unsolved murder of the Ruby postmistress...

So what? I felt like I was proving myself as a deadline reporter, something I'd done 20 years earlier. Were either the newspaper or I advancing?

Ultimately, we did, but my advice to editors and fellows for future years is to clearly explain before the educator arrives in the newsroom who she is and why she's there. During my waning days at the Daily News, many reporters and editors said they'd wished they'd known who I was, what I might have offered, that they would have liked to have taken advantage of my experience and perspective.

I got useful feedback for my media ethics class when I asked people for stories that had led to soul-searching. Some were pure Alaskana; for example, is it getting too close to your source if he literally saves your life when it's only you and him on the tundra at 60 below zero?

From my experience, our classrooms and curricula are at least as advanced as what is demanded in today's newsrooms. In both places, discussions are going on about delivering news online - whether it calls for different ways of presenting stories, changes in traditional criteria of "what makes news" and storytelling techniques that don't always depend on the 5 Ws and an H lead.

At the American Press Institute, we heard a lot about team approaches as alternatives to traditional beats. At the Daily News, there was not much talk about teams, but I was struck by the total integration of the excellent photo department into the newsroom and the newspaper.

Several of the veteran reporters were intrigued by writing "New Yorker-style" pieces in a daily newspaper. Sometimes, that motivation and depth resulted in dynamite work. Other times, it seemed no one was particularly concerned about getting a story in the paper on deadline, that it could run any day. But if newspapers become magazines, what happens to their particular portfolio, their freedoms and responsibilities?

I had heard, of course, about draconian cost-cutting in newsrooms. Knowing that good reporting takes solid resources, I wanted to find out more about those areas of the operation that literally fund it and of which I know little: advertising and circulation. Those days were terrific learning experiences, exceedingly well-planned itineraries by the respective department heads.

In addition to the factual and technological information, I also learned that many people in the paper's circulation and advertising departments had no contact with people in the newsroom, and, in fact, were viewed with suspicion if they ventured into it.

Some of those people think it's rudeness; some think the reporters are elitists. Busy reporters and editors tend not to notice, or, if they do, fears arise over blurring lines or conflicts of interest. I didn't know the ad people, either, when I was a reporter, and only contacted circulation to complain when the zoned editions I edited weren't being delivered.

Yet ad and circulation representatives are in the neighborhoods every day, working a beat the way reporters used to. They talk to "real" people, not just the usual sources. They notice when a mom-and-pop business closes, when a block seems to be changing, where young people are gathering, for good or ill. Surely there's some creative, credible way editors in downsized newsrooms could leverage information and contacts made by non-editorial employees.

I also had thoughts about reporting as a young person's game. Perhaps there are stamina and energy concerns - not a problem when the sun was out all the time and my kids were in Atlanta, not Anchorage. In Boston, where my real life has been centered for the past 15 years, I think I'd be a far better reporter today than I ever was in my tireless 20s when life revolved around the newsroom. My experiences in volunteer activities, many of them having to do with my children, have been far more illuminating of the back-stories and context of Massachusetts issues than all my professional dealings were early in my career. That single-mindedness earned me lots of bylines, acclaim and a Nieman Fellowship, but I know textures and nuances here much better and see holes and missed connections constantly in the local media

Although I'm a professor now, I still identify more as a reporter, so it's hard to "editorialize" and write what I think. I don't have the answers, just questions and musings, based on an amazing Alaska adventure. Thanks, ASNE, the Knight Foundation and the Anchorage Daily News for the opportunity.

Day, an associate professor at Boston University, was attached to the Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News.