Friday, February 06, 2009

Qualities of the digital journalist

Steve Outing, a well-known thinker and writer about online journalism, has envisioned the not-so-distant future digital newsroom in his January 28 column for Editor and Publisher. (The All-Digital Newsroom of the Not-So-Distant Future)

The whole thing is well worth reading and, journalism profs, recommending to your students.

Of particular interest is what Outing says will be the qualities of those who land jobs in this new space. They will be:
  • people with understanding of and enthusiasm for new forms of media and storytelling

  • multifunctional journalists who can use all the tools available, particularly audio and video recorders

  • social networks users and people who know how to gather an audience

  • people who can engage with audiences and are comfortable sharing personal information

Underlying all of these qualities is an affinity for practicing good journalism.

Someone asked me today what I thought the Knoxville News Sentinel (the local paper) would be in 10 years. I said I thought there would be a 24/7 web operation with a weekend print edition. That's based on what has happened in the last few weeks.

But who knows what innovations await us? We can only say with certainty that paper will no longer be surpreme.

1 comment:

Matt Powell said...

Reporters are one type of journalist. They create reports as a profession for broadcast or publication in mass media such as newspapers, television, radio, magazines, documentary film, and the Internet. Reporters find sources for their work, their reports can be either spoken or written, and they are often expected to report in the most objective and unbiased way to serve the public good. A columnist is a journalist who writes pieces that appear regularly in newspapers or magazines.
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