Posted on Wed, Jul 14, 2010 @ 06:30 AM
What do we call people who report the news these days? I find it amusing that the industry is struggling to come up with new names for reporters. Are they VJ's? Backpack journalists? Multi-media journalists? Multi-platform reporters? Perhaps you prefer the old-fashioned "one-man band" name.
Since when does a change in technology dictate finding a new name for yourself? Musicians didn't become digital recording artists when they started putting their songs on iTunes. Hearst recently announced that their reporters were all being trained to create and distribute material in all sorts of places - but they were sticking to the "reporter" name. Good call. In the newspaper world, photographers who grew up shooting film now shoot digital still pictures and take video, too. So are they photographers or videographers? Or digital jounalists?
One thing is certain -- for the readers/users/viewers who receive information, it really doesn't matter what we call ourselves. This new identity crisis of ours is just a reflection of the industry's temporary uneasiness with technology change. A reporter who filed a story by telegraph 100 years ago was still reporting. Yes, it's cool and it requires some new skills, but does sending a story using a Droid phone really require a title change?
- John Altenbern
Posted on Wed, May 05, 2010 @ 05:25 AM
If you look at an aerial map of Nashville, it's easy to see the Cumberland River winding through the city. It's not as easy to see the faces of the 1.5 million people in the metro area - thousands of whom are flooded out this week. And it's not easy to see those flood victims on television, either. They can certainly be seen and heard on WSMV, our client in Nashville which is doing yeoman's duty the last few days, broadcasting literally life-saving information around the clock on-air and online. But in terms of national attention, the guy with some fireworks and three gas grill tanks in his SUV in Times Square is getting top billing. Oil in the gulf is - rightly so - competing for attention, too. Both are legitimate and big stories worthy of coverage. But it does make you wonder how it would be handled if the gatekeepers of big media were flooded out in Manhattan and the guy with the SUV had parked on a busy streetcorner in Tennessee.
There's a lot of speculation about what newscast rundowns will look like when citizens take control from the media "gatekeepers" and build their own lineups. It's already possible online, and the trend is building. Somehow I think we are speeding up the audience's dissatisfaction with some of the TV news judgments being made today. The "East of the Hudson" view can sometimes be a little too narrow in a country of 330 million. It especially looks that way if you're flooded out of your house in Nashville.
-John Altenbern