Follow Online Editor Melodie Miu on Twitter for ACP updates: @mldmiu
You know how everyone keeps telling student reporters that print is dead and the future of journalism is shifting to online?
Well, all of that already happened.
There’s no more shift, there’s no more transition from print-to-online, no bumpy road ahead. It has already happened. We’re in the ‘now’; we’re Alice and we’ve passed through the rabbit hole with all the floating furniture, now swept up into the magic that is Wonderland. Hello, Caterpillar smoking hookah.
So I am often perplexed when many adults still take it upon themselves to ‘warn’ young journalists that we have to focus on creating online content, maintaining our social media presence, updating our websites regularly, and learning how to code and produce multimedia.
Way ahead of you, man. If you need any evidence of young people readily embracing this new golden era, look no further than the live-tweeting and exchanges happening within this year’s ACP hashtags: #acpsd, #ncjc and #ACPressAMA.
When the panel “Striking a Balance Between Online and Print Media” was cancelled last minute, students who didn’t leave had formed a community forum where we could trade advice and suggestions with each other about improving our online platforms. As Arts & Entertainment Editor Emily Mibach talked about The Campanil‘s blogging and credited me, I introduced myself by raising up my phone and saying, “I’m tweeting.”
Maybe the conversation on shifting needs to move to the conversation of practicality. While we may have all the data and tools out there, young people don’t often know how to use them to our advantage and which ones to choose. This concern admittedly was addressed by a few panelists and keynote speakers like Nicholas Whitaker, the Media Outreach Lead for Google, who gave a presentation about entrepreneurial journalism on Saturday, March 1.
I appreciated Whitaker for providing us with information about Google’s media tools, such as the website http://www.google.com/get/mediatools/ which reporters can use for their investigative stories. The webpage includes essential links to Google features such as their Google Maps Engine, Charts, and Advanced Searches. Even without Google’s applications, though helpful, I think there are loads of ways for young reporters to create word clouds, charts and info graphics if they look into the countless how-to tutorials out there.
Whitaker asked us to be “entrepreneurial journalists,” which he defined as journalists who “want every tool at their disposal so that they can better serve their audience and stay current.”
This type of journalist is not going to be carrying around just a voice recorder, notebook and pen. On top of all that, they’ll be carrying iPads, chargers, headphones, smartphones, etc. And it won’t stop there. With efficiency in mind, Whitaker foresees reporters one day using portable, hands-free equipment, especially when they’re reporting in a war zone and can’t spend time protecting expensive equipment.
I hope to see this new trend make its way into The Campanil newsroom. We’ve only recently changed our publication to online-to-print, meaning that we first publish all of our articles online and then put our best, most interesting articles into print form.
I want to produce more multimedia, such as Storify timelines, slideshows, videos and podcasts, and have all editors and writers learn how to use WordPress with ease so that when I graduate this May, I can rest easily knowing that The Campanil has become a well-oiled machine that’ll continuously pump out not only great reporting but also great web content.
LIVE-TWEETING OF KEYNOTE SPEAKER NICHOLAS WHITAKER OF GOOGLE
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Follow Online Editor Melodie Miu on Twitter for ACP updates: @mldmiu
For more updates of ACP, you can ‘Like’ The Campanil on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter @thecampanil for our live-tweets on panels and keynote speakers, and join the conversation using the official ACP hashtag #acpsd.
Or, check out all ACP-related posts on our designated ACP web page. You can also easily click to see the page “ACP 2014” on the upper-right hand corner of the website header.
