Dec 4, 2008
December 4th, 2008 by Paul Bradshaw
new journalists for new information
Information is changing. The news industry was born in a time of information scarcity – and any understanding of the laws of supply and demand will tell you that that made information valuable.
But the past 30 years have seen that the erosion of that scarcity. Not only have the barriers to publishing, broadcast and distribution been lowered by desktop publishing, satellite and digital technologies, and the web – but a booming PR industry has grown up to provide these news organisations with ‘cheap’ news.
Information is changing. Increasingly, we are not seeking information out – instead, it finds us. The scarcity is not in information, but in our time to wade through it, make meaning of it, and act on it.
Information is changing, and so journalists must too. In the previous parts of this series I’ve looked at how the news process could change in a multiplatform environment; how to involve the former audience; what can now happen after a story is published; journalists and readers as distributors; and new media business models. In this part I want to look at personnel – and how we might move from a generic, hierarchy of ‘reporters’, ’subs’ and ‘editors’ to a more horizontal structure of roles based on information types. [Read more]
Sep 18, 2008
September 18th, 2008 by Paul Bradshaw
Continuing the final part of this series (part 1: Community is here) I look at conversation. I look at why conversation is becoming a form of publishing itself, why journalists need to be a part of that conversation, and a range of ways they can join in. [Read more]
Feb 20, 2008
February 20th, 2008 by Paul Bradshaw
In the second part of this five-part series, I explore how adaptability has not only become a key quality for the journalist – but for the information they deal with on a daily basis too. This will form part of a forthcoming book on online journalism – comments very much invited.
The adaptable journalist
A key skill for any journalist in the new media age, whatever medium they’re working in, is adaptability. The age of the journalist who only writes text, or who only records video, or audio, is passing. Today, the newspaper and magazine, the television and the radio programme all have an accompanying website. And that website is, increasingly, filled with a whole range of media, which could include any of the following:
- (Hyper)Text
- Audio
- Video
- Still images
- Audio slideshows
- Animation
- Flash interactivity
- Database-driven elements
- Blogs
- Microblogging/Text/email alerts (Twitter)
- Community elements – forums, wikis, social networking, polls, surveys
- Live chats
- Mapping
- Mashups
This does not mean that the online journalist has to be an expert in all of these fields, but they should have media literacy in as many of these fields as possible: in other words, a good online journalist should be able to see a story and think:
- ‘That story would have real impact on video’;
- or: ‘A Flash interactive could explain this better than anything else’;
- or ‘This story would benefit from me linking to the original reports and some blog commentary’;
- or ‘Involving the community in this story would really engage, and hopefully bring out some great leads’. [Read more]
Model for the 21st century newsroom pt.6: new journalists for new information flows