Bernie Goldbach in Clonmel | 350 words
UPDATED April 2012 with Guardian story from Zemanta.
SINCE I STARTED writing for the Irish Examiner, it's obvious the old production line model for news has evolved to a networked mode of operation. I don't have to go to Cork to file my story--it's all done over the internet.
That's the same conclusion Paul Bradshaw makes in A Model for the 21st Century Newsroom. Anyone can assume editorial and distribution role. Journalists are no longer limited in the medium they could choose or the time and space to tell a story.
What isn't obvious to a lot of traditional journalists is how new developments have changed the way people and organisations find and distribute news. I'm more likely to discover a headline item via the Irish Open Mailing List or on Jaiku than through a broadcast radio report. This isn't an effect limited to a small cluster of people adept with technology. An entirely new manner of distributing breaking news is starting to emerge.
In the States, friends share snippets of information on their Facebooks. Like Jaiku, a US-centric service called Twitter offers a simple text-friendly channel for people to share information about what they had for breakfast. If my American friends had smart phones, they could use Twitter and Jaiku while away from their desks.
As hard as editors may try, there's no way young people are going to mirror their grandparents and buy the news in print or sit to hear the news read at set times on the television. News is moving to an online environment and that will shake up the entire field of journalism.
I'm waiting for the battle lines to be drawn up by media organisations as new websites emerge in the hopes of attracting people to thematic areas emphasizing sport, fashion, technology, or politics. The emphasis in these new thematic areas must be on speed of reporting and not on the depth of coverage. I'm already seeing the first shifts of the sand as old head fact checkers take their retirement without being replaced on the news desk.
Related links curated by Bernie Goldbach on aggregation.
Paul Bradshaw -- "A Model for the 21st Century Newsroom, Online Journalism Blog, September 17, 2007.
John Plunkett -- "Don't break stories on Twitter, BBC journalists told", February 8, 2012.
