Will traditional reporting soon be obsolete? Image courtesy of CareersWiki
I came to my journalism course knowing very little about new media and frankly not caring a whole lot about it either. In the space of a few months I have gone from calm indifference to worry!Fear!Panic!
It is becoming glaringly apparant, as reiterated by every tutor and lecturer since September that my career in journalism will not be a career in journalism unless I welcome new media into my life as if it were the soulmate I never knew existed. My soulmate doesn’t like me, I can tell. The blogging is fine, it’s the other things that gets me down. The futility of Twitter bemuses me still and the podcasting and vlogging is obviously too complicated for my technophobic brain to deal with. Don’t even get me started on Quark.
So, PWR New Media (some American company, I’m struggling to work out what they actually do) released survey results last week saying that 60 per cent of the 215 journalists surveyed now contribute to a blog and other online media sites, 39 per cent of those only started this in the past year.
Clearly all journalists are starting to panic. Job cuts and fear are driving us all to the internet and there we shall stay until job security is resored. Maybe then we will be able to pick back up our notebook and pen and creep back into the arena of real life reporting. This feels unlikely however, new media is gaining momentum by the day. I mean, why go out on the street to look for stories when you can scroll through endless ‘tweets’. It’s not being lazy, it’s being media savvy don’t you know.
http://www.pwrnewmedia.com/2009/pwr_release021109/index.html
Journo student: Thoughts and exploits 