By Rebecca Shillenn
News is changing so quickly that journalists must adapt or face potential extinction.
Chet Rhodes trained journalists to use video to add detail to their print stories. Photo: Aaron Roberts |
“If your news organization isn’t built to follow this wave, it’s just going to swallow you up,” Rhodes said.
No media are safe; panelists from radio, television, Web sites and traditional print all said Friday that their organizations are making drastic changes. It hasn’t been easy for any of them, but to the surprise of many journalists, the transition to a multimedia newsroom is working well. The panelists said that it improves their original platforms as well.
Rhodes said when he first started training print journalists in video much of the Washingtonpost.com staff was sure it wouldn’t work. But before long the journalists surprised everyone, including themselves, by using their video footage to add detail to their print stories and double check their quotes and content.
Rhodes said Washingtonpost.com is trying to make the transition easier by pairing print experts with basic knowledge of video with an experienced “back office staff” who can edit and publish the video.
Radio journalists are also finding their niche. Maria Thomas of NPR Digital Media said NPR’s Web site has been drawing a lot of traffic recently because of its podcasts, the product of top-notch radio journalists.
“If we can’t win at podcasting we should be ashamed of ourselves!” Thomas exclaimed.
The site has radio broadcasts posted as “audio blogging” and about five-and-a-half million of its podcasts are downloaded every month. NPR has been podcasting for about 18 months.
Pankaj Paul of the News Journal in Delaware wowed the attendees with the organization’s audiovisual, blog, video, magazine and daily newspaper convergence. He said their newsroom has been restructured three times in the past six months and a fourth overhaul is about to begin.
Paul said the local community has come to rely on the News Journal's online coverage so much that he has gotten e-mails asking why fender benders or burglaries were not immediately covered.
Yet the New Journal's hard copy audience is stabilizing and its content has improved. The staff is learning how to work in another medium and the paper no longer has a separate online department. They are the online department. Their only real problem is getting all the news covered, all the time.
“We’re not struggling because of what we can’t do, but because people like to go on vacation…,” Paul said as the audience laughed.
All the panelists expressed that their successes have not been absolute. Some of the news organizations have lost staff that could not, or did not want to, keep up with the non-stop environment of the online, multimedia newsroom.
Even with top-notch staff, it is no day at the beach shaping them into multi-faceted online journalists. Several of the panelists said many journalists still think of online stories simply as promos for their “primary” media platforms. Nor does any organization have enough money to hire a full staff of different multimedia experts or buy top of the line equipment.
“We have a converged mindset, if not a converged newsroom just yet,” Thomas said of NPR.
Yet the panelists say journalists working in converging media are more excited about the profession because as their curiosity expands, so do their skills and knowledge. Paul said there is no way their rocket-paced progress will burn journalists out. The number of people, new and old, following their work online pushes them to keep working and work harder.
Besides, it’s obvious to Paul that there is no other choice but to continue.
