News judgement is getting an upgrade.
The chapter From Broadcast to Internet: Repurposing Content in Principles of Convergent Journalism stresses yet again the importance of being a good storyteller, especially with the use of many different forms of technology.
But this now means knowing how to tell a story along with which story to tell.
The realm of broadcast already calls for many efficient decisions. With a new web-based platform, many more decisions need to be made.
Authors, Jeffrey S. Wilkinson, August E. Grant and Douglas J. Fisher define “repurposing” as the transformation each story takes for different mediums. The foundation of the story stays the same–same reporting, same rules.
Repurposing for the web, however, translates to interactivity for the news seeker.
The 2007 Murrow-Award winning broadcast sites listed in this chapter as examples, demonstrate that interactivity can be as simple as taking a viewer poll. A large market radio station, KCBS-AM in San Francisco includes such a poll on their home page.
CNN takes things a little further by promoting citizen journalism and having their reporters blog about various issues. In this case, typical mundane stories are more appealing by providing options for a reader to participate, see what others are saying and take in supplemental information.
The reading also foreshadows in my opinion, a rather confusing future for radio news identities. With video images so readily available, why would one reduce access to audio only? Without getting into specifics, the authors state that there is a niche for that too.
After reading this chapter, the stress level for the aspiring journalist only increases, because it is obvious that IT and software skills are a must.
There is no consistent universal language for video software just yet, but the authors claim that Flash is becoming that language with time.
So who’s teaching Flash???
