Excellent piece by the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones on modern journalism and technology.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/11/hitech_hacks.html
However, note - once again - the almost insane emphasis on speed (and the associated use of tech) at the potential cost of other journalistic 'values':
"I told them [student journalists in Cardiff] that it was great to learn a wide set of skills, but that news editors would not want to employ someone who could just about shoot a video, muddle their way through a court story, and slap together a few minutes of unpolished audio. They would rather have someone who was brilliant at one thing and they still cared about the fundamentals of journalism. Spotting a story, crafting a powerful intro, telling people something they didn't know - these skills have not been rendered obsolete by the web revolution."
A good companion piece to Rory's, and one which encapsulates the current adapt-and-survive mentality in the business, is this entry by Debbie Weil, posted in September:
http://www.debbieweil.com/blog/journalism-isnt-dead-long-live-entrepreneurialism-and-multimedia-skills/
If, after reading this stuff, you're left with an uneasy sense of lines blurring, definitions melting, and a few smartarse techie start-ups making a killing out of warping the industry to their collective will, then consider this: just because someone says you should take the amateurs seriously doesn't actually make them serious. Even when bloggers write about journalism, it sometimes seems quite hard for them to distinguish the lines which need to be maintained in order to present their material effectively. A case in point is Walker Morrow, who you've probably never heard of (he's Canadian, so that's perfectly understandable). His post yesterday, about why he's no longer writing for the Cowichan Valley Citizen newspaper and website, is an excellent example of authorial dominance winning out over content to such an extent that the issues are obscured in a haze of overly-personalised, wince-making fog:
http://walkersunknownthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-im-no-longer-writing-for-cowichan.html
If there's one piece of advice left to give to today's 'citizen journalists' in a hurry, it's this:
Tweet a little less, and think a lot more.
However, note - once again - the almost insane emphasis on speed (and the associated use of tech) at the potential cost of other journalistic 'values':
"I told them [student journalists in Cardiff] that it was great to learn a wide set of skills, but that news editors would not want to employ someone who could just about shoot a video, muddle their way through a court story, and slap together a few minutes of unpolished audio. They would rather have someone who was brilliant at one thing and they still cared about the fundamentals of journalism. Spotting a story, crafting a powerful intro, telling people something they didn't know - these skills have not been rendered obsolete by the web revolution."
A good companion piece to Rory's, and one which encapsulates the current adapt-and-survive mentality in the business, is this entry by Debbie Weil, posted in September:
http://www.debbieweil.com/blog/journalism-isnt-dead-long-live-entrepreneurialism-and-multimedia-skills/
If, after reading this stuff, you're left with an uneasy sense of lines blurring, definitions melting, and a few smartarse techie start-ups making a killing out of warping the industry to their collective will, then consider this: just because someone says you should take the amateurs seriously doesn't actually make them serious. Even when bloggers write about journalism, it sometimes seems quite hard for them to distinguish the lines which need to be maintained in order to present their material effectively. A case in point is Walker Morrow, who you've probably never heard of (he's Canadian, so that's perfectly understandable). His post yesterday, about why he's no longer writing for the Cowichan Valley Citizen newspaper and website, is an excellent example of authorial dominance winning out over content to such an extent that the issues are obscured in a haze of overly-personalised, wince-making fog:
http://walkersunknownthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-im-no-longer-writing-for-cowichan.html
If there's one piece of advice left to give to today's 'citizen journalists' in a hurry, it's this:
Tweet a little less, and think a lot more.