Newspaper reporter - those two words, inexorably linked inmy consciousness, once formed the basis for my identity.
TV reporters stared into cameras, radio reporters spoke into microphones. I communicated with a keyboard, producing stories that lived in words andonly in words. Nothing more was expected of me. Nothing more was possible. That's all changed. There are no more newspaperreporters, TV reporters or radio reporters. There are just reporters, period.Journalism has become medium agnostic and story centric. This is good for us,the public, but not so good for some journalists who now must carry a camera as well as a pen.Journalism today is layered, not linear. This requires a newkind of storytelling, one that presents information in multiple angles andformats. Free from the constraints of edges and airtime, stories now have endless sidebars. Our news is in three dimensions - a 360-degree narrative that is sometimes shared and altered by people who never wentto journalism school or had a byline. And yet that new, altered version of thestory exists forever online as news. News is smaller and moves faster. Journalists don't tellstories as much as give them life, leaving the telling for others. This isa much different kind of identity, a shift from the medium that you work in to thestories that you work on.And here lies the challenge for today's reporter: Forget theinfrastructure and focus on the news. You don't work for a newspaper; you work in the newsbusiness, using any tools at your disposal necessary to do your job. A printreporter may shoot video if that helps tell the story. A TV journalist canwrite a blog or a radio journalist can post photos to illustrate a story on hispodcast. I witnessed this struggle first hand during a recent "newmedia" workshop for travel writers. These were print people worried about whatcameras to buy, how long a podcast should be and whether they could manage thisnew approach to storytelling. All they knew for sure was there was no choicebut to learn and evolve. This is not threatening but rather freeing - withoutconventional constraints, reporters can be more engaging and thorough. It alsosecures a place for print as a needed piece of the multimedia pie, instead ofbecoming a faded, stubborn relic screaming for dominance in a media world goneforever flat.
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