Everybody is moving towards cloud computing, data can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, information can travel faster than old media by email. The new media should be on cloud, instead of the old media way, print then web, it should be the other way around. Reporters posting onto the web directly, rather than one reporter for the web and another reporter for print. We are on a path to digital media, Kindle, Nook, iPad and Smartphones. Anything where you can get news pushed directly to your devices is new media way. Why wait for you to read the news the next day when you can have it on that day.
But what if people still prefer the old media way? Physical paper in their hand? That’s fine, but the way it should be is to combined both reporters into one, consolidating the way we report and submit the news. Print can decide what to print, and news on the web can be overwhelming, but the more the better. This way, we still keep the culture of old media, and without breaking the bank. John Paton, CEO of Journal Register, is about to prove it with his Ben Franklin Project.
The news can be posted to the web, such as through the popular Content Management System (CMS) by WordPress, use Google Docs to store your Documents for Backup, and Flickr to store your images. With Flickr, you can use Creative Common so people can pay for the images and when it’s time to print, print can just pick which high quality files to choose from on Flickr that was uploaded by your reporter on the field.
Here’s why digital should comes first before print. If print comes first, then they will have to worry about H&J (hyphenation & justification — that is, fitting text to finite holes in print designs). That dictated their process and we have to follow it. But if it was digital first, journalist and writers can write in the first line without worry about how it would look like in Print. It’s easier to adjust digitally than if you were to worry about hyphenation and adjust justification. They can write on their blog, worry free. That would save time, cut cost and best of all, it works in both format, digital and print for the company.
This would open up a new culture of writing to writers and journalist. If they can blog about their writing, they can ask questions to the public, such as, “Good idea? Is there something else you think I should do instead? What’s the best use of my time? What do you want me to find out for you? If I do this story, what questions do you have? What do you know? Whom should I call?” As the process continues, the reporter can share what she learns or doesn’t learn; and the community can help fill in blanks and make the reporting better.
Then a print editor can grab the story and fit it for print. This would eliminate the issue we had if we were to just convert everything to digital first, then print. Instead of going to the traditional way, this way, we can be ready for the future, in-case nobody wants to read physical newspaper anymore and would rather read online or on their Kindle or iPad. Shocking, but it’s already happening in parts of the country, Europe and North America; best to embrace what will be rather than taking a nose dive like some other print company in the U.S. Yes, there are standards worth saluting from classical journalism. But there are also new methods and opportunities to be learned online. No one owns journalists or its methods or standards.
Robert Picard writes that journalism:
is not business model; it is not a job; it is not a company; it is not an industry; it is not a form of media; it is not a distribution platform. Instead, journalism is an activity. It is a body of practices by which information and knowledge is gathered, processed, and conveyed. The practices are influenced by the form of media and distribution platform, of course, as well as by financial arrangements that support the journalism. But one should not equate the two.
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