Kate’s Corner

Week 10: The Future!

Posted on September 20th, 2007 by kmburb.
Categories: Uncategorized.

Both the lecture and the weekly reading take an interesting look at what the newsroom and the industry of journalism might be like in the future.

I believe that there will be even more of a growth in the popularity of newer media forms, such as blogs, wikis and citizen journalism, as more people embrace the idea that they too can express their stories from their part of the world, share their knowledge and have their say in an international forum. The idea that people with specific knowledge would write blogs and columns is an excellent one as well, although it would take jobs away from journalists if the industry is going to become so condensed.

Just as the last few years have seen the meteoritic rise of before unknown technologies and applications (eg Podcasts, cameraphones, Facebook, Skype etc) I’m also sure that there are many more such things around the corner! What they are and how they will fit into the media environment I don’t know…

How we could fit more (new) forms of media into our lives though, I can not imagine, especially as I multitask my media use already…an average evening has the TV on, my laptop in front of me, my mobile next to me and the day’s papers spread out around me as I continually flit from one to the other…

As for the outlook for journalists, if there is going to be such a convergence in the media industry, a great convergence of skills will be required from everyone. This not only means there will be a much greater competition for jobs, as just being a good writer/researcher will no longer be enough, and only people with excellent skills across all areas of media production will be employed. As a student who is about to graduate, and who doesn’t have advanced skills in all those areas, this is a daunting prediction.

It also means that institutions, such as universities, will have to adapt their courses to not only teach that journalism is going to change, but to teach students the skills to cope with and excel in that change.

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