Media The New Journalism
posted by on December 5 at 12:30 PM
I know I’m one day late on this, but yesterday’s Washington Post brought an interesting vision of the future of journalism.
It’s a vision being pushed by the Gannett newspaper chain, and it involves spending a lot of time in your car, laptop computer plugged into cigarette lighter, writing about community news — like, say, the local chamber of commerce’s new fundraising calendar.
Does a company even need trained journalists for such an enterprise? It’s a question Reuters is now asking in a slightly different context. In their opinion, anyone can be a photojournalist.
No skills, no experience, no problem!
Wired had a piece on Gannett's "crowdsourcing" in early November.
As a former Gannett editor, I can say I'm not surprised by this loosely veiled budget-shearing move. And I'd bet good money that these "reporters'" laptops/laptop-like-devices are jimmy-rigged Apple IIes.
Wired had a piece on Gannett's "crowdsourcing" in early November.
As a former Gannett editor, I can say I'm not surprised by this loosely veiled budget-shearing move. And I'd bet good money that these "reporters'" laptops/laptop-like-devices are jimmy-rigged Apple IIes.
Wired had a piece on Gannett's "crowdsourcing" in early November.
As a former Gannett editor, I can say I'm not surprised by this loosely veiled budget-shearing move. And I'd bet good money that these "reporters'" laptops/laptop-like-devices are jimmy-rigged Apple IIes.
Those multiple posts are your server's fault, not mine.
This trend is occuring simultaneously in TV news reporting, the so-called "one man band" concept, wherein the reporter is expected to also be the camera operator, and the video editor. The idea (supposedly) being that new-fangled HD video equipment is so compact, and easy-to-use that you don't need a trained camera operator anymore; the reporter can just do the set-up on their own, push a couple of buttons, run in front of the camera, do the segment, run back to the camera, turn it off, break it down, load it in the car, return to the station, then edit the footage on the now so-easy-a-six-year-old-can-do-it editing software, and turn it in to the news director in time to hit the 6:30 p.m. broadcast.
Of course, all this extra work means the reporter in fact spends significantly LESS time doing actual reporter type work, and more time doing filming and editing work, but hey - it also means you can lay off two now excess employees, so it's a good thing for the station, right?
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