Journalists should no longer think of themselves as “newspaper reporters” or a journalist of any specific medium. Instead they should consider themselves multimedia producers equipped to tell a story on multiple platforms. They should also have knowledge of how stories are being consumed. More than anything, a truly “integrated newsroom” will have journalists who build tools that enable them to do reporting at scale and innovate the storytelling process.
*Why Reporting Is Ripe For Innovation*
Some of this is coming to be accepted knowledge, at least in the forward-looking corners of journalism, but this story does point in the directions journalism should be going.
I love the idea of creating “listening dashboards” designed to surface in real time the trends in news, so reporters can be more nimble and responsive to what’s happening in the zeitgeist.
You can somewhat get there with current tools, monitoring for keywords and trending topics, and using sentiment tools to measure where people are coming down on a given issue or topic.
But in fact, those tools now are mostly constructed around seeing brands monitoring what people are saying about them. There’s lots of money there for developers (and that’s why we have those tools), but there should be an opportunity to develop these other tools as well, for whatever counts as a journalistic enterprise in this fluid time.
