Reportr.net

Day two of the Knight New Media Center seminar on Election ‘08, kicking with a session I moderated on the internet’s impact on journalism. My main argument - this is a great time to be a journalist, with the more ways to reach more people than ever before. I cheekily entitled the session, Jam Today, taking my inspiration from this quote from Lewis Carroll:

The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day.

With the internet, we can have jam today. The session proved a lively exchange of ideas and experiences, looking at issues like immediacy, the use of multimedia, questions of resources.

One of the valuable exchanges came towards the end. My comment that the media is engaged in a war of innovation and has lost every battle so far, sparked off a debate about the role of developers in the newsroom. The New York Times has a futurist in residence and a R&D team. Someone also mentioned that when they invited developers into an editorial meeting, one of the editors questioned why these web guys were there.

But there was a recognition in the room that innovation is key and journalists should be working far more closely with developers and researchers. This is to be applauded.