Between the past and future is the present

There is so much gloom and doom around journalism these days that Milton Coleman sounds like a breath of fresh air.

“I think the state of journalism is good. I think these are exciting times. I focus on the future. I don’t like to lament the past. It was a good and glorious past, but we’re moving forward and I think the excitement of the moment is the excitement about transforming our newsrooms into news centres that can operate on many, many platforms, can carry the same strong journalism that we’ve had, can improve that journalism, and can continue to reach even more and more people.”

If you are a J-school student or teacher…

Bryan Murley has an interesting post on Innovation in College Media that should have journalism schools, journalism students and journalism teachers thinking. Sit down and reflect on the year gone by, he says, and ask yourself if you have done some or many or all of these multimedia things:

• Have you got your news org. online?
• Do you have a content management system?
• Have you posted any videos online?
• Have you included any audio soundbites in a story?
• Have you done a photo slideshow?
• Have you put up an audio slideshow (perhaps using Soundslides)?
• Have you done a map?
• Have you used weblogs on your site?
• Have you uploaded source documents (PDFs, excel spreadsheets, etc.) to accompany a big story?
• Have you used social media (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube) to market your stories?
• Have you tracked what others are saying about you via Technorati or Google Blogsearch?
• Have you used the web site to post breaking news online FIRST?
• Have you moved the online editor out of the back office and into a position of authority?
• Have you allowed comments on your stories?
• Have you encouraged writers to write for the Web and include hyperlinks in their stories?
• Have you tried something experimental?

Read the full article here: How are you doing?

‘Globalisation, media feeding off each other’

Globalisation and the market-driven media are often mentioned in the same breath to suggest that each is feeding off the other. And the well known Kannada writer Dr Chandrashekhar Kambar did so at the presentation of the Sahitya Akademi prizes in Bidar on Tuesday terming media houses as agents of consumerism.

The media has fuelled the growth of a “disposable society”. “After getting used to use-and-throw toothbrushes and pens and machines, we have reached a stage where even family relationships have become disposable,” he said.

Read the full article: ‘Media has fuelled growth of a disposable society’