Reportr.net

A heads-up to everyone who is interested in the changes taking place in journalism. Harvard University’s Neiman Foundation for Journalism has released the winter 2006 issue of Neiman Reports, entitled “Goodbye Gutenberg.”

There is a rich wealth of material on how the impact the internet is having on journalism.

Having read just a couple of the articles, this struck me from Jon Palfreman’s piece:

Before the Web, storytelling was platform specific. Newspapers and magazines focused on text and photos, radio told stories with audio, and television dealt with moving pictures and sounds. Each platform has its tools and specialized skill sets, advantages and disadvantages. The Web forces these platforms to integrate. Today’s best media Web sites are multimedia productions combining text, stills, audio and video.

This is exactly what news organisations should be thinking about. And it is what journalism schools should be doing - preparing students for the newsrooms of the future.

Not only will journalists need to be familiar with multimedia production techniques, more importantly, they will need to be able to think in multiple media.

Multiplatform journalism is as much a state of mind, as it is a set of skills.

(Via the Berkman Center for Internet and Society)

Unfortunately, there isn’t a PDF of the report available to download just yet.