Columnist wonders if technology is killing journalism

No.

"Do more with less" is a bullshit feel-good mantra, but it's not wholly realistic. Spreading strained and possibly inexperienced reporters too thinly will result in mediocre work. Even experienced reporters and those who are capable of good time management will struggle to give best efforts at times.

Have you ever been working on a story -- working on it, really developing it -- close to deadline, but you need another source? You need to make one more call and it'll take a few minutes. You make it, get the info, clarify a quote and the story is better. That time was spent doing reporting and honest work.

Today, would that time be spent sending out a tweet? Updating a short blog or online post? Trying to make sure the city council graphic link is working for the site? All that stuff doesn't wait now until after print deadline. It has to be done on the fly, socially, quickly, get-it-up-now!-realtime so the masses won't be left waiting. Then the deadline hits.

That phone call doesn't get made. There's a question in the story, something lacking. Something maybe the competition or television gets before you can follow up. Sure, you can "update" the story online and make the call. But the print edition that most people still believe is the most reliable, may have a hole.

Unfortunately in some of today's newsrooms, the management doesn't care. They want it all, want it now, want it in print, online, video, social media and quality has suffered. But there should be a demand to maintain standards even if an online post is missed or a tweet series doesn't get sent.

"Get it first but first, get it right" still holds water.

 

I second this sentiment.

 

This is the money graf.

Technology is only a tool. Unfortunately, the tool, and adjusting to it, is becoming more important than any product to which it is applied -- not because it really matters more but because it is moving/changing so fast that if you don't adapt, you (and your product) are left in the dust. This is what newspapers are trying to prevent, at the expense, unfortunately, of the actual product, as SixToe wrote after the post I quoted.

I'll admit that I never, ever, look at video, and really, I wonder how many people actually do so on any regular and consistent basis if they don't have to.

Except in cases that involve REAL breaking news that's life-changing or life-threatening -- another words, cases that involve fires or weather and Mother Nature in your area, there's usually no immediate reason to do it, it's usually not particularly interesting, and oftentimes, as many have said, it is of poor quality -- something done just because it's the thing to do these days.

As someone posted earlier, it is all just "added" work -- and that makes it something that people may never get to.

 

Oh, and I am so sick of people saying that newspapers don't and won't embrace social media and new technology. They have no choice but to do so.

Is there any newspaper out there that isn't using this stuff? That isn't requiring such work from its reporters? That isn't calling itself "a web-first operation"? That doesn't list social-media savviness as a requirement of applicants seeking jobs? And that isn't listing it, and experience with videography, first -- ahead of any reporting/writing skills?

Newspapers, and the people who work on them, are willing to embrace new ways, especially if it is believed that they will help the product, and if the the returns yielded are seen as being worth the time/effort/money required.

I'm just not sure anybody is truly convinced of that yet.

It's the business model that's broken, not people's ability to change or adapt.

 

This is the key. If you are going to do multi-media, you have to pick your spots and understand the labor investment.

This swings both ways though. There are a lot of cushy gigs writers have -- I've had plenty of them myself -- where they could be asked to do more. I find that tweeting, blogging and all the new-age crap we do at games now is very doable and I can still do a good story. Makes me realize how idle you once were.

But of course, you can't send one writer out to a big event and expect constant twitter updates, a blog, text messages, a video podcast at halftime and post-game and a story that assumes the writer had actually, you know, seen the game.

 

My late colleague George Kimball once observed, "people don't understand that one of the duties of this job is thinking." Reduce the time journalists have to think about what they're reporting on, you get worse reporting, whatever medium you're using to communicate that reporting.
It's not just in this business, but newspapers lead in the management school of thought that overworking people until they do a lousy job is the highest form of management science.

 

Video killed the radio star.

 

I agree with the columnist but for this reason: Internet has made bloggers, and bloggers are anyone who THINKS they can write.

 

One man's "idle" can be another man's "observing, learning, processing new information," which, at a game on deadline, is always happening.

 

I'm afraid I disagree. The old business model has come and gone, that's for sure.

But newspapers failure to invest and adapt in plush times has led to the further diminishing of staff and progress. (Not the last five years, the decade before that.)

That's not saying the journalists were slow in changing, but management/leadership's focus was. In the years when car ads and movie ads and classifieds were printing money (almost literally), the newspaper -- as an industry -- failed to invest, as a group, in new delivery systems. More worried about their absurd, current profit margins the industry shook its head and would rather remember how things were (and hold onto it as long as it could) instead of where things were going.

Again, that's not a indictment of journalists. But one of an entire system and model.

 

This is where newspapers fail, by asking reporters to do the jobs of three or four people. Writing, editing, designing and producing is way too much to ask one person to do. Yet many newspapers ask their reporters to do exactly this.
When I write a story for a website, I have the time to shoot and edit video, create photo galleries if asked and still write a decent story. I don't have to worry about designing or editing or writing headlines. I also don't have to worry about ridiculous deadlines. I can still put together and publish an internet package that can be tweeted, e-mailed and circulated before a newspaper story is published.
And my deadlines are 1 a.m. on Friday nights for high school football. I don't know of any newspaper that can have a 1 a.m. deadline.

 

I believe there are 3 factors in production in any business: Time, manpower, equipment/technology.

Time: You can't have more than 24 hours. You can be efficient in how you utilize the time you have.

Manpower: That's the wildcard. The more employees you have, the more you can produce ... assuming they maximize their productivity. It's up to management to decide how much of that productivity should be quality or quantity.

Equipment/technology: You don't want this to limit the productivity of your manpower. It can maximize the productivity. But it can't increase the amount of work time nor can it increase the amount of manpower on the roster.

How a business balances those three factors makes a huge difference in how successful the business can be.