Page 220 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

the limitations of the medium for which we work, mainly because it
seems as though we’re admitting something is wrong with what we
do. This book has clearly outlined that each medium has strengths and
weaknesses. Smart journalists in the future will learn to play to those
strengths, thus also shoring up those weak points.
While we fail to realize it in many cases, teamwork is not a con-
cept completely foreign to newsrooms. Journalists who interact with
other media in an “us versus them” blood feud often overlook the
fact that they currently work in a collegial fashion with people who
are very different than they are. Print reporters work with photogra-
phers every day, as do broadcast reporters. Text is the medium that
holds together a newscast, as is the case in a newspaper. A stunning
visual image is powerful on television and on the front page of the
paper. Again, knowledge and our ability to share that knowledge are
two linchpins that connect us all as journalists.

210 Everything Is Knowable
Futurist Esther Dyson has written that digital technology potentially
means that everything is knowable. Broadband puts the resources of
hundreds of organizations at our fingertips. The challenge, Dyson
argues, is filtering what we need to know, ignoring the information
and people we do not want to hear from, and finding the best sources
of good information. “Instead of finding, the challenge is filtering,” she
said (2003). This sounds like a job for journalists who are trained to
filter and select. Edward De Bono, one of the world’s great thinkers,
predicted in 1999 that entirely new professions would emerge in the
coming decade that involved filtering information: “In the future there
will emerge a series of intermediary professions—sorters, digesters,
researchers—that will act as a kind of reduction valve,” he said. “It
is no longer possible for every user to sort through all of the infor-
mation they want.” One consequence of this for some journalists will
be a move from newsgathering to news processing as a primary job
responsibility. Future journalists will spend as much time each day,
and possibly more in some positions, editing and assembling the huge
volume of news that arrives at a news organization, rather than gath-
ering it. The need for quality editors—people can who manage large
volumes of information—will increase. The role of the journalist as
provider of context and background will become even more relevant.