Tear down barriers to convergence
Newspaper employees have to stop thinking about just their traditional roles and begin embracing convergence much earlier in the process.
This mean thinking of different ways to tell a story before reporting or interviewing, not after. It means bringing in Web people before a project is done, not after it is ready for publishing. And it means having reporters do more than just take written notes when covering an assignment.
Andy Dickinson says we need to think about convergence more seriously if we want to succeed (his first Carnival of Journalism post):
To make convergence work we need to make newsrooms behave in the way we are expecting the audience to work. We need to bring convergent behavior back in the newsroom, away from the point of publication. That means reporters need to take stills cameras out with them every time they leave the office. They should be recording every interview with a digital dictaphone. That doesn’t mean that they should be doing anything with that content. They should be making that content available, where appropriate, in the same way we know they should be using Delicious or a blog.
I think we need to change the mantra inside the industry to
Gather everything: Share
We need to do that well before we even think about where its going to go.
Dickinson has some good points. Most organizations still tack on multimedia at the end. “Oh, we have this big print package, let’s add some Web component at the end.” Or “the Web people can capture audio and do that multimedia stuff later on.”
That’s the exact wrong way to approach innovation on the Web. We have to think about the Web and multimedia content before and during our reporting.
Every print reporter should have a camera and get training in photo journalism. Those same reporters need to know how to work a digital recorder, in case an interview is worth posting on the Web. It would be great if all reporters knew how to use Twitter and blogging software.
Mindy McAdams implores us to quickly destroy all silos — or perish:
The TV and radio news people talk about putting their existing content on a Web site and teaching the kids to write “briefs” for the Web. The print people talk about writing and linking. The online people (always outnumbered, always out-gunned) try to talk about reporting in new ways — but no one ever seems to hear what we are saying. If the journalism schools could break out of this trap and “think different,” we could provide a great service to this field we all love.
Unfortunately, we are far away from this being reality.
December 15th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Pat - Great point. Sadly, I think this issue predates even the web. I can recall hearing design folk making similar arguments about not be included early enough in the process and reporters and photographers not providing them with enough material. I would like to believe that in newsrooms that tackled that thorny issue, convergence is coming more freely.
December 16th, 2007 at 12:01 am
Pat, I think it makes a lot of sense for newsroom staffers to “get” more about the other silos in their own newsroom. They need not be master, but they should have at least a conceptual understanding.
My only concern, however, to the whole “tear down the silos” mantra is that there’s is often - not necessarily always - a certain fine-tuned focus in a “siloed” staffer.
Yes, there are photographers who can write and there are writers who can get a good shot with a point and shoot camera, but it’s a very fine line between this and just “working on the cheap.” When newspapers start sacrificing quality for the bottom line, it’s over. It becomes then a matter of time until that newspaper shuts it’s doors forever.
This is not black and white of course, spending gobs of money on a prima dona photographer/writer/web programmer doesn’t make sense either - especially if they can’t back it up. But I think sacrificing quality to save some pennies is not a long term strategic win.
December 16th, 2007 at 1:01 am
Yoni, that’s an interesting point. I’ve seen what you are talking about where a lot of editors and writers still don’t include “print” staffers like designers in the process very early. I think a lot of them still don’t realize how helpful a strong infographic or package can be for a story. If a paper can’t even get its print ducks in a row, it won’t have a clue on the Web.
Marc, I think it is a delicate balance to strike. I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe in good enough. I think we have to put out high quality journalism, no matter the format.
But I also think it’s important to have employees who can do more than one thing in the 21st century. The best photographers should be concentrating on getting pictures for audio sideshows, photo essays, photo galleries and other multimedia projects (and know how to make audio slideshows and other multimedia packages). For a lot of the more basic photography tasks, a lot of other journalists would be fine.
Training is very important. If I give an employee a camera, they have to know how to adjust the ISO, white balance, read the histogram and work the camera in manual mode. Without training, none of our employees will reach their potential. You’ll never see me advocating giving journalists cameras, audio recorders, etc without proper training.
I’ve seen what giving random people random equipment does, and it is always a waste of time and money. We cannot sacrifice quality, but we need employees with more than one skill.
December 16th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
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