Journalism is all about contacts.
They give us the news.
Having contacts hasn’t changed, but the way we get news stories has. Contacts in the past would have put pen to paper, rang up, or popped into the newsroom to tell you about Little Miss ASBO living next door. Now that Web 2.0 is on the scene, the number of contacts and news sources at a journo’s fingertips has increased by millions.
Online communities such as Facebook and Twitter mean you can now be in a constant dialogue with potential sources and stories. If you need an expert on the red squirrel, put it out there on Twitter, and within minutes you could be talking to your dream interviewee. Similarly, if you put a news story out into cyberspace, people will come back to you with new angles and information. The journalist’s network is now increasing way beyond the newsroom.
But what does all this mean for the role of the newsroom?
The old-fashioned (and I am sure the somewhat enjoyed) media view, is that the journalist sits at the top of the ladder, while his contacts cling on to the rungs below.
This concept is no more.
The modern day journalist is a collaborator. He is out there in as many networks as possible, working with contacts and citizen journalists, pushing the newsroom out in to the community. With new methods of news sourcing, the newsroom organisation has to change. Jeff Jarvis looks at the idea of the ‘new newsroom’. What was once organised around sections such as sport, business and job titles, will now, he predicts, be organised into topics and stories.
Whatever the changes that have to be made, Charlie Beckett warns us that we have to embrace network journalism to secure the future of our profession. We still need contacts and sources, that won't change. It's the way we work with these sources that will evolve - let's call it back to the old school with a twist!
Image courtesy of Steve Punter @ flickr.com
Those journalists with the fattest little black book, tend to have the fattest CVs. Look at the BBC's Robert 'man of the moment' Peston. His bulging contact book ensured that he was the first with economic exclusives, thus bagging himself every consequent financial interview going and becoming our very own credit-crunch pin up. Word on the grapevine is he hasn’t changed his mobile number in 17 years in a bid to never lose a single source. (A case of contact craziness in my opinion, but each to their own.)
Having contacts hasn’t changed, but the way we get news stories has. Contacts in the past would have put pen to paper, rang up, or popped into the newsroom to tell you about Little Miss ASBO living next door. Now that Web 2.0 is on the scene, the number of contacts and news sources at a journo’s fingertips has increased by millions.
Online communities such as Facebook and Twitter mean you can now be in a constant dialogue with potential sources and stories. If you need an expert on the red squirrel, put it out there on Twitter, and within minutes you could be talking to your dream interviewee. Similarly, if you put a news story out into cyberspace, people will come back to you with new angles and information. The journalist’s network is now increasing way beyond the newsroom.
But what does all this mean for the role of the newsroom?
The old-fashioned (and I am sure the somewhat enjoyed) media view, is that the journalist sits at the top of the ladder, while his contacts cling on to the rungs below.
This concept is no more.
The modern day journalist is a collaborator. He is out there in as many networks as possible, working with contacts and citizen journalists, pushing the newsroom out in to the community. With new methods of news sourcing, the newsroom organisation has to change. Jeff Jarvis looks at the idea of the ‘new newsroom’. What was once organised around sections such as sport, business and job titles, will now, he predicts, be organised into topics and stories.
Whatever the changes that have to be made, Charlie Beckett warns us that we have to embrace network journalism to secure the future of our profession. We still need contacts and sources, that won't change. It's the way we work with these sources that will evolve - let's call it back to the old school with a twist!
Image courtesy of Steve Punter @ flickr.com
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