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05 Oct 09

Five phrases to outlaw in newsrooms

Journalist and Web 2.0 enthusiast Alison Gow lists a few of the things she never wants to hear in a newsroom again.

headlinesanddedlines.blogspot.com/...es-to-outlaw-in-newsrooms.html - Preview

online-first newsroom web journalism Alison Gow

Whether the issue is reporters speaking up, or news editors listening to them, or editors being clear on what the agenda is, it's not an insurmountable problem.
Blogging isn't a mystery, but why some people in a newsroom view it as a chore to be avoided it at every opportunity is. The internet isn't going away and advertisers are not going to start hurling money at newspapers like they used to; this means that anyone planning on staying in journalism should want to be learning new skills - not only do these open up whole new ways of story-telling, but they make sense from a point of self-interest.
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- Don't wait to be asked - think! Plan ahead in the same way you marshal your questions in advance for a planned interview, and if it's a breaking news story then the scope for instant digital journalism is even greater - tweet, post photos of what's happening to your own or your newspaper's Twitter stream, livestream action using Qik or Bambuser, and be proactive. Text is the least creative part of any news story; ultimately, no matter how well-written your colleagues tell you it is, it's simply 350-plus words to fill a space in a news page. If you supplement your text with still and moving images, a podcast, an interactive Q&A, or a liveblog, how much more dynamic and memorable will your complete package be? How much more valuable will it be to the audience? The answer is simple: A lot.
- The Don'ts and the Won'ts usually revert to Stress, Morose or Baffled mode when asked to do something vaguely digital, and then don't do it, citing various problems, from technical to time. The main problem, of course, is that their chosen industry has evolved, and they haven't, yet.
- Any journalists who use the phrase "Digital doesn't make money", or its evil twin "Print is where the money is" when questioning (aloud or as part of an inner debate) the value of a newspaper's website need to stop and consider this question: Why does suddenly this matter to you?
  
  Someone raised an interesting point with me recently by asking why newspaper journalists - who have always viewed themselves as above the sordid business of making money - have suddenly started wielding digital income statistics like a shield.