TheWayoftheWeb

Leading on from my previous post…

I’ve been having an interesting discussion on a Facebook group for journalism. A discussion began around the topic “Should newspapers provide new media training”.

From there it dovetailed into new vs old media. The interesting thing was seeing bloggers, professional journalists, and a founder of the Fox News Channel all in the discussion.

The crux of my argument would be that newspapers and publishers should offer training in both new and old media, and that you’d be foolish not to take advantage of both. if nothing else, you might have a slight rethink about the way you work, and make a slight improvement in your writing or search engine optimisation. On the other hand, it could spark someone revolutionary.

I don’t think you should ignore new, or old, media, and if you do, then you’re missing out. There is going to be a place for print, TV and radio for a long time yet, and the formal training of ‘old’ media could help improve the work of countless internet writers, just as the ‘new’ media training could help a lot of writing become more searchable, and findable.

Although I tend to ignore most of the rules for fun on this blog, I have no doubt that the excitement of seeing my name in print, and my efforts to become a better print journalist, have been me more able to structure and write on and offline to a reasonable level of quality. Just as new and old media can, and should co-exist, so should old and new media training. Treat all your knowledge as another thing to keep in your toolbox, and you’ll be far more capable of more jobs. And after all, isn’t one of the main journalistic qualities supposed to be the desire to know why everything is happening?