Analog Kid. Meet The Digital Man.
- He’s not concerned with yesterday
He knows constant change is here todayHe’s noble enough to know what’s right
But weak enough not to choose itHe’s wise enough to win the world
But fool enough to lose it
Those Neil Peart lyrics, written 24 years ago, seem just as relevant today because they reflect the illogical and emotional struggle of how difficult it is at times for us to adapt to change - no matter how necessary or abrupt. The changes from childhood to adult, from old to the new, from death to life.
Education is the key to unlock the challenges of constant change
I had a quiet lunch last week with the publisher of a large North American newspaper and we while we were both on vacation we couldn’t avoid discussing the unknown in the year ahead. We talked about the training challenges, the institutional challenges and, more. Yes, that nasty word ‘monetize’ came up but that’s OK, his job is to keep his paper in business.
He surmised that, with fully-trained journalists on staff, local franchises have some great opportunities to thrive in the coming years. For editorial units one critical key is to broaden the base of ‘beyond print’ expertise throughout the newsroom and keep story teams nimble and ‘fully-trained.’
In the end we agreed that newspapers will not be better served by creating yet another department of specialists - but instead everyone on the staff must learn how to work in this new media world. Beyond print. To understand the concepts, see the dynamics up-close, and not only learn how to speak the languages but know how to use these new tools. The investment publishers make in providing continuous learning and reorganizing their teams will prove critical.
2007 certainly has the potential to become the ‘year of the fully-trained journalist’ as more print-only editors gain skills and experience producing video, editing multimedia blogs and developing interactive story techniques.
The Google/YouTube merger must be seen as an emerging business model and the value is not with YouTube’s revenues. Some think Google could have bought the New York Times for that much money — maybe – but that crowd is not the online audience that Google’s advertisers want.
