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It can’t be “this vs. that” in a new media landscape
Posted By katie allison granju
This Lost Remote piece nails the cultural hang-ups that continue to hold many traditional newsrooms back (although I think we’ve reached a tipping point just in the past 12 months that viewers/users/readers will begin noticing in their local news providers).
Television vs. newspapers. Blogs vs. news. The web vs. print. VJs vs. photogs. You can find tons of “vs.” at every journalism conference, in every media boardroom, and indeed on every media blog. The “vs.” supposes that there are two choices, and it is the notion that we need a “vs.” that is one of the biggest reasons why traditional media and new media aren’t performing nearly as well as they could.
“Vs.” thinking is what’s often worst about TV news. We’re constantly subjected to the obligatory “the right says this, the left says this” kinds of reports that are then allegedly balanced. News and media are stuck in “vs.” thinking in our own industry.
For years, there was this snobbery that newspaper journalists looked down on TV journalists for being too shallow. TV journalists didn’t care - they got the news on faster than a newspaper could. It was “speed vs. depth.”
Now, with the web, that “vs.” goes away. And newspapers are producing their own video reports. The truth is, most of those reports aren’t of the same caliber as those you’d find on TV. At least - that’s what the TV people will say, because that’s the New Snobbery: nobody can do TV like we can. That’s fine - except the web is not TV. And some newspapers now have dozens of cameras on the streets. Their time to publication is no longer an issue. Can they go live? No. Not yet, anyway. But they now present a formidable offering: in-depth written stories, video from the scene, pictures, multimedia presentations and social features like comments and voting are all available at some newspaper sites.
(It’s at this point that we need to stop calling that a “newspaper” site at all. Newspaper vs. TV sites is another “vs.” that has to go. They’re all websites to the user.) (Emphasis mine)
Hat tip to Jack Lail
Apr 27th, 2008
