Real quick, just wanted to say I was blown away by a CollegeJourn chat I peeked in on tonight. It hasn’t been that long since I got my undergrad degree, but the entire nature of the conversation is different. In fact, I’d venture to say that just two years ago, there was no conversation about where journalism was going — I think many of us, including our instructors, were still very much rooted in traditional practices. I hate to say that grad school hasn’t been all too different.
Some questions posed by the discussion, which Greg Linch of Publish2 told me usually consists of mostly undergrads:
- How should editors best pay attention to search results, specifically using SEO terms?
- Are site homepages still relevant, or do most readers access content story-by-story?
- What are the best editors out there doing right now to harness the capabilities that come with the web?
I mean, wow. Quite intimidating. It made me think the future of journalism will consists of people who can not only write, but possess technical knowledge to build a site from the ground up if they had to. But now I have a couple questions I wish I would’ve asked:
- Where do mid-to-late career journalists, many of them now editors strapped for time and resources, fit into these theories? I had a great experience with an editor named Marshall King. He let us roam free as far as using web techniques to gather stories were concerned, but he’s a busy guy. It seems like a tall order for us to expect every traditionally-trained journalist to go out there and learn to code and use SEO. The people out there hiring us are still trying to save the print dinosaur, bless them.
- Where does the print model fit? No one talked tonight talked about newspapers.
Maybe I’m a little late to this discussion. Has the past year of my life been spent learning stuff that won’t be applicable in five years? Whatever happened to writing? I feel like I’m right on the cusp, somewhere between new and old.
