Tapsall (2001, p. 235) poses the question, “How likely is it that the average journalist of 2010 will be a multi-skilled, multiple-media performer, individually delivering high-quality and effective text, sound, vision, and on-line copy for a global audience?”
If we’ve learnt anything through University, the answer would be very likely. We’re forever being told that it is no longer good enough to have good news-sense and be a good writer; we now have to be multi-skilled, with talents that cover all of the media outlets, be it text, broadcast (audio and visual… and both) or online. However the key phrase is Tapsall’s question is “high-quality”. While journalists may be required to fulfil the multiple-media requirements, a question of quality is raised. If the journalist becomes the scriptwriter, camera operator, sound technician, editor, online publisher, while remaining the journalist, will the quality of news be compromised?
Tapsall (2001, p. 252) suggests that technology is only a temporary solution for the current state of journalism; journalists must ensure that passion and integrity is alive, at all levels of the news organisation, otherwise “journalism will continue to struggle for respectability and acceptance”.
The essential underpinnings of what makes a ‘good’ journalist haven’t changed, despite the changes in the way news in delivered. However, if the journalist is “stretched too thin”, the resulting news may suffer. Do you agree? Or is this simply the changing face of journalism?
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Reference:
Tapsall, S. (2001). Technological Talespinning. In S. Tapsall & C. Varley (Eds.) Journalism: Theory in Practice (pp. 235 - 253). South Melbourne: Oxford.
I definitely agree that journalists and the quality of their work will suffer as a result of them being stretched too thin, and because of this the converging forms out media and the great move to the online realm can also act as incredibly worrying factors rather than simply conquering a new world.
ReplyDeleteOf course we still hope that they can maintain the standards that they had before, now we must just hope that this is actually possible.