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!
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)
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