Sloan, who graduated from the MSU Honors College with a degree in economics in 2002, spoke to a news-writing class about his experiences in the rapidly changing world of journalism. He offered advice on how to navigate and succeed in the field's new model, which is increasingly based on the internet.
Much of the advice was given from Sloan's personal experiences. While working at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, Sloan and his younger colleagues noticed that many of their older co-workers weren't catching on to the role that the internet was beginning to play in the world of news.
To illustrate how much the internet was changing things, Sloan and a partner created a "Epic," a short film that told a fictional futuristic account of how the standard print media was overrun by internet companies.
The video garnered millions of views, and Sloan took his vision of the future to Al Gore's start-up cable news network, Current_, which gears stories toward a younger, more internet-savvy audience.
Sloan described his vision of journalism's new business model to the students, explaining that larger, more traditional news outlets would eventually be phased out by smaller organizations of journalists with devoted online followings.
He recommended that journalism students get acquainted with new technologies online and experiment with their own models of reporting. He predicted that a job with a small internet start-up company would be more promising than a position at a larger network.
Look for a follow up to this story tomorrow.
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