Passion about journalism. period
Kevin Anderson at Corante posts "Why can't I be passionate about journalism and technology." He writes eloquently of a student who "lost her "print privileges" after working for her newspaper's website" and of his own experience as an online journalist pioneer.
But I know this old media snobbery all too well from personal experience (fortunately, not recent) and from too many stories like this from bright, ambitious journalists who see the future and aren't stuck in the past. They still see the internet as some digital trifle, a plaything, not as a forum for serious journalism.
The ironic thing is that the industry is alienating exactly the kind of people who will help them transform to meet the changing needs of the market. It is ironic that they are also alienating many parts of their digitally literate audience.
Last summer, we hired an intern, Feilding Cage, who had just graduated from college, to help us build more web-based journalism projects. He was so good that after about 6 weeks, we hired him full-time. Now, five months later, he has taken a job with Time to help them with the same thing.
There is hope.
Comments (2)
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JR - Neither "side" here seems to understand that they're speaking in generalities where they do not exist. Web journalism is one of the least standardized jobs I can imagine. I've seen talented journalists stuck doing cutting-pasting-cropping jobs, and I've seen people launded to high heaven because they know how to do a couple of tricks in Flash. The latter is the rough equivalent of the scene in Monty Python in which they bring in the machine that goes "ping!"
Often, print journalists think we're just cutters-pasters-croppers. And online journalists such as Anderson don't realize how many cutters-pasters-croppers there are, and how whatever skills they brought to the table have atrophied.
Posted on December 31, 2006 2:15 PM
I think anyone who works in Online Journalism knows how many cutter-paster-croppers (CPC’s) there are out there.
The existence of so many ‘production’ journalists in online newsrooms is because of a lack of engagement with the medium by those that control the traditional output. There is a legacy of many traditional organisations seeing the web as nothing more than a presentation platform for existing material.
The CPC’s are there as an interface between the old content and new presentation platform where there is a lack of understanding, skills and a will to engage.
What many traditional media outlets are realising is that this attitude has put them behind the game. In trying to catch up (when perhaps they don’t need to) they are paying the price for having created an environment where skills can atrophy.
I don’t see this as an issue of a lack of standardisation. In some ways I’m glad there isn’t a template online journalist in the same way the trad-newsrooms have been allowed to stratify. I’m more inclined to see this as a quiet revolution that’s getting louder – on both sides. Those people that have been trapped as CPC’s but have engaged, are finding a voice.
This isn’t a brave new world anymore. The generalities are there. Online Journalism is defined, it is practiced and refined. That’s happened and is still happening on the outskirts of the media landscape without the input of the trad-media.
Perhaps the thing to remember for both sides when advancing the debate is just how much of the old-school media mindset is still around.
Posted on January 2, 2007 7:27 AM