As you may have noticed – no News Day summaries for a few days! That’s because I’m at Poynter’s Big Ideas conference, and reporting on media issues from there. Here’s the latest:
Big Ideas mean big work for somebody – and in today’s journalism / recession / funding climate, that means killer workloads and impossibly long days.
This morning’s presenters at Poynter’s Big Ideas conference got some push-back, with questions from the group arguing that the workload required for multimedia, social networking newsrooms requires journalists in those projects to be “on” for 24 hours, always ready to respond to breaking news, in an unending 24/7 (or at least 24/5) schedule.
I know that’s true for small operations like the TC Daily Planet – but I am hearing that it is also true for major news operations that have a newspaper, on-line presence and on-line video and audio news delivery. Including readers – via blogs, Twitter and other social networking – improves the end product through greater interactivity and contributions, but it takes more time, not less.
What’s the solution? I’m not sure there is one. Now – back to hear from the Austin American-Statesman’s Suzannah Gonzales on her podcasts. If you want to tune in to the liveblog of the conference, go to Poynter’s liveblog or check out the Big Idea bullet points of the presentations.
Mary Turck
News Day 