Newspapers: the ultimate gadget

I love this ad. I found it on www.paidcontent.org. Really interesting site that discusses the future of the media.

But it seems a little soft in comparison to this next video which Arianna Huffington shone light on in her speech at a newspaper conference in Washington addressing the question “How will journalism survive the internet age?” If it whets your palate, check out paidcontent.org for more great roundups.

But in my opinion the future of good journalism will not depend on whether old forms of media survive or not. It will depend on whether those in the trade are willing to stand amid the spits and shouts extracting facts, aware of their commitment to verification, accuracy, authenticity, regulation, and readiness for open, transparent communication with their audiences despite market pressures. This is not a new challenge.

Could the unprecedented power of the digital revolution, eventually, untie this awareness? Perhaps yes. Good journalism needs time, support and money and these are in short supply. So far there are no successful means of producing profits from online newspaper publications, and job cuts in media organisations means that many journalists do not have the time to for sustained journalistic inquiry. As a profession, journalism could die out.

But if it does not, journalists will have to defend their professional values to avoid being consumed by online communications. And if this happens, the prognosis of what will remain is, in my opinion, very good. Even those at the heart of the money-making media giants are showing signs that good journalism must be protected.

The-son-in law of Rupert Murdoch, Matthew Freud, recently spoke to the New York Times about the despicable journalistic standards upheld by the Fox News Channel boss, Roger Alies. He said: “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Alies’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corp, its founder and every other global media business aspires to.”

Fear not! We shall remain!

Joanna Geary: A thoroughly modern Lois

We had a lecture last week by Joanna Geary, web development editor (business) of The Times, who told the story of her career so far.

A wonderful if somewhat cautionary tale for those of us at the doors of a job in newspapers. She began as many of us did, watching Lois Lane played by Teri Hatcher in Superman. After drifting away from journalism when the abyss between Lois and real life dawned, she returned after uni to a stint of work experience on the Solihull Times, then landed a job on the Birmingham Post.

But unlike some of her colleagues, who have been made redundant (and I saw on my own work experience the ghosts of busier times fill the Birmingham Post newsroom) she has been head hunted by The Times and is making it with news and tools like Nigella Lawson makes it with sugar and spoon.

Her story is great. It’s a story, it’s unusual, it’s full of random tweets between her and her next big break. She landed her current job after she was tweeted by the editor of The Times who had been tracking her ideas and online news philanthropy for a good while.

Her secret? She is journalism’s Nigella. She works it. Not by weirdly seducing copy but by being inventive and intuitive about what journalists can offer now. She began by leading the Birmingham Post into the blogosphere, having noticed that an online arts blogger was outdoing her own attempts to keep Birmingham up to date on the latest arty news.

The fact that Joanna now works for The Times and is not either working from home in her pants or not working at all is because she’s got what newspapers need and always needed. This is not expertise, it is rather a willingness to embrace the next big thing.  Joanna’s success is not because she needed something, anything to survive in journalism.

She has been doing what any journalist has always done, got to grips with the best way for getting news to her audience. Today this is the news potential of social networking and the massive explosion of news-providing tools we have at our disposal. She’s just the noughties version of old school hack with his ear to the phone.