From men in cardigans to…?

This part of the conversation stems from arguably the best lecture of the term from Rory Cellan-Jones. In a lecture subtitled ‘Typewriter to Twitter’ he charted how the news media had changed from when he started until the present day and gave us an insight into his beliefs for what a journalist needed to be in the future. He has been a business and economics reporter for many years and since 2007 has been the BBC’s Technology correspondent, regularly contributing to the corporation’s technology blog dot.life.

Rory Cellan-Jones compared the world when BBC Breakfast news first started in 1983 with the journalistic world now. He touched upon regular themes that I often mention in these conversations. As a sort of conclusion to the posts so far I want to borrow his overall comparisons between 1983 and 2008 and then move on to develop his ideas about the role of a modern day journalist.

1980’s – Large teams behind the news and people largely had one skill which they used all of the time. There was a large regular audience and little competition in the way of broadcast news media. Also the idea of immediacy meant will a package be ready for the next bulletin whenever that would be.

…whereas…

2008 – The audience has become more fragmented and is seen to be becoming more interactive. Within the newsroom journalists are expected to be multi-skilled and immediacy means NOW. And I am sure I don’t even need to mention citizen journalism/UGC!

Twitter, Flickr and Digg are buzzwords in many newsrooms and more sites are appearing. Rory Cellan-Jones introduced us to Demotix which acts as an agent for UGC helping contributors receive some money for their work as well as Qik where people can broadcast anything live onto the net. YET how much does this actually affect what makes the news and how broadcast journalists work? Rory Cellan-Jones used Twitter as an example and commented that it’s great although not for people who are not on twitter.

A point which Rory Cellan-Jones mentioned which I feel supports my idea that traditional attitudes to journalism haven’t changed and online journalism is simply an extra string to media’s bow helping to get stories to consumers and make create interaction. He mentioned how there is a reading of the most popular news stories on the BBC News Website, yet this does not dictate the run order of the news stories. Rory Cellan-Jones concluded by saying journalists had to maintain pride in their own editorial judgement. I passionately agree with this idea, whilst at the same time accept the internet is here to stay and is a major tool for the journalist.

I agree with Rory Cellan-Jones journalists need to be able to work on a multi-platform and always be actively experimenting with new media, although must have a key skill. It is of course impossible to tell what will happen in 2009 and beyond so from men in cardigans in 1983 to…?

Happy New Year!

Typewriter picture courtesy of http://flickr.com/photos/justabiggeek/ (Creative Commons)

Mobile Journalism – A ‘pick n mix’ of journalism?

This week looks at the role the mobile media is playing in society and the possible convergence of material from all media outlets and companies. I also want to mention some examples of this, looking especially at the way mobiles made an impact in Mumbai last week. The basis of this conversation follows a brief lecture from Rick Waghorn last week. He left a traditional newspaper environment to start up My Football Writer on the Internet for Norwich City fans. His work on this site raises some interesting points about what is right in mobile journalism.

Rick Waghorn spoke about websites with experienced writers (such as his) teaming up with experienced broadcasting sites such as ITV Local. This creates a multi-media platform with companies sharing their resources. Rick Waghorn claims this would create a barter economy where he swaps a match report for clips of the game. However, would this not create a stale media where all outlets are carrying exactly the same multi-media content? This is a problem in my eyes as surely the beauty of the Internet is that there is so much content on it, people have the freedom to choose.

Although, as Rick Waghorn said the mobile phone is a publishing platform, yet the quality may not be amazing on film, pictures and audio. But surely if the writing is excellent and entertains the readers then some poor quality audio is excused. After all I would argue that the challenge for sites such as My Football Writer is to make enough money to be able to afford quality sound recorders and cameras (I am not saying that’s an easy task and would take years).

So we have discussed journalists embracing the online and mobile media, I would like to briefly develop points from earlier posts with a case study. Twitter and Flickr as well as other websites documented the Mumbai terrorist attacks last week almost immediately. Citizen journalism gave the general world population the initial insight into the attack. Whilst I am 100% in favour of UGC and online media I must re-emphasise my opinion that media outlets must make every effort to check the information they are given. (The 0750 Radio 4 interview gives a good insight into UGC during the attack)

Finally I simply feel I have to comment on the role of the media in the world and the continuance of traditional journalism alongside, and incorporated with, online journalism. Watching The Changeling in the cinema this weekend the plot re-emphasised the power the media has and how it can make change happen as well as holding the authorities to account. This took a long time in 1920’s and 1930’s America yet should mobile/online journalism have been around then I am convinced change would have happened quicker.

Journalism is now immediate but I don’t see why traditional quality, ethics and authority need to change.

That’s all for now…till next week…



Pick + Mix photo courtesy http://flickr.com/photos/dfluff/ (creative commons)

Blackberry picture courtesy http://www.flickr.com/people/breakdown/ (creative commons)