Jonathan Cooper ’97 was recently promoted to Vice President Media Relations & Employee Communications at Digital First Media, which jointly manages the Journal Register Company and MediaNews Group (offering more than 800 print and online products). Before joining the corporate staff at Digital First Media, Cooper held several positions with the Journal Register Company, including leading the Ben Franklin Project, an experiment to publish 18 daily websites and newspapers using free, web-based tools, and he began work on Project Thunderdome, the company’s digital content operations center. He also launched the Journal Register Company’s Media Labs (community-focused media training centers) as well as the open-to-the-public newsroom as part of the Company’s growing audience-focused engagement strategy.
“I made the move to digital while working in New Haven, Conn., at The Register, because I saw a way to tell stories in different formats—especially video,” Cooper explained. “The ability to create and edit video was no longer reserved for television, because the tools and equipment needed were available to everyone—including our audience. Now, there is even the ability for our newsrooms to livestream news without the cost of a TV station’s satellite truck.
“The biggest shift for me came in 2010 when our company launched a digital transformation that focused on digital platforms, because our audiences were demanding the ability to get their news and information on the device of their choosing.
“No matter the platform, the basics of journalism remain key—accuracy, fairness, and quality storytelling. Those are the basic skills our students should be learning. But today’s students have tremendous opportunities, because they can launch their own sites and become their own publisher and grow an audience without depending on a newspaper, TV station, or a traditional media outlet. Students can pursue their love of baseball—except the Yankees—politics, fashion, science, or business and establish their own publishing arm using the tools that are readily available online. You can publish video, hold live chats, extend your audience network, and more. The tools to be a publisher are there, it’s up to students to unlock them and put them to use.”
Cooper considers KSC’s culture that allows students to make mistakes and learn from them as a contributing factor in his current success. “Our company practices a ‘fail fast’ strategy when fostering innovation among our employees, and that same thinking was fostered during my time at Keene State by both Dr. Y [former President Dr. Stanley Yarosewick] and Dr. Hickey [Delina Hickey, former VP for Student Affairs]. I spent time in their offices—sometime explaining the mistakes I/we made at The Equinox—and they always provided an environment to find a solution.”
“The professional journalists we had access to at the Keene Sentinel and Concord Monitor, provided a real-time sounding board for the issues we were facing.” Cooper went on to explain. “That type of real-time, real-life feedback is even more valuable as the media landscape has changed, and I am encouraged to see Keene State continuing to provide that valuable access that pushes learning and experience beyond the classroom.”
Cooper’s work has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Post, and the Keene Sentinel, and he taught intro to media writing and advanced digital reporting as an adjunct at Quinnipiac University. He was awarded the KSC Alumni Association’s Inspiration Award in 2004 and was selected as 2010 fellow in Knight Digital Media Center’s Knight-McCormick Leadership Institute.