"I See Opportunities": Journalism Skills Needed Virtually Everywhere
By Sarah Ewall-Wice, RTDNA Editorial Team
Dr. Sybril Bennett wants the news industry to catch up with advancing technology and thinking outside the box. According to Bennet, a professor at Belmont University in the Department of Media Studies, the news industry needs to create the platform while they still have the credibility and real estate to do so. The news needs to set up a space people need now and in the future.
“In here, I want you to go free,” Bennett challenged her crowded audience at the Excellence in Journalism Conference 2011. She spent the session actively pressing her audience to not give up on the future of news media but to find a new way to approach it and interactively provide it to the masses. She believes that curation, indexing, research, context, and creation are detrimental but need to thought of in different ways.
Crowdsourcing is an area the news is extremely weak in and utilizing the latest trends can be the change.
Mobile: With the expanding mobile world, more people than ever have access to a mobile device. It’s rapidly becoming a key way to gather information. News directors and editors need to start experimenting on how mobility can be utilized in an original way. Predictions include the end of the printed-paper, and cyber security being the biggest threat in the near future. News source need to use these ideas to create stories like how education will later fit these changes, what age groups are affected, and explore what privacy rights are.
Gaming: It is predicted that the gaming industry will reach $54 billion by 2015. In 2010, mobile gaming was worth $33 billion, so where are the news opportunities here? One idea is to come up with an appointment dynamic to get people to come back to watching the nightly news, or the press can even use gaming to mobilize a community for a benefit. Everyone likes to win.
Augmented Reality: The use of scanning barcodes with a mobile device is growing fast. For example, people can scan menus to learn more about foods or a barcode on a water fountain to learn more about a clean water initiative. The news industry needs to find a way to implement the latest and greatest in Layar, Sixth Sense, and Aurasma.
Dr. Bennett believes the news can be turned into the middleman, and the middleman sooner or later can be cut. Through collaboration, conversation, and community the news will continue. It just needs to get creative, for there are opportunities everywhere.
