By Margaret Kearns

Breaking News: Journalism is evolving.

Did you know the Oxford English Dictionary, that stalwart of the English language, turns eighty this year? Like many an eighty year-old, hair dryer in hand to assist in candle blowing activities, it would seem it is no longer ‘with it’, no longer keeping up with the times. Why so? Well, for no reason other than this, our wordy friend defines the ‘journalist’ as:

 “a person who writes for newspapers or magazines or prepares news or features to be broadcast on radio or television”

 And those of us engaged in the learning of journalistic skill know nothing, if not that journalism, as we know it, is in the middle of a revamp. A journalist must now be the definitive jack-of-all-trades. Get the story, photograph the subject, snatch a bit of exclusive video on your phone, print, post and email it, blog about it, create a text poll of readers opinions, provide a forum, an RSS feed, analyse trends, post the YouTube video, link it, tag it, send it into space. Multimedia is king.

However, this evolution cannot be attributed solely to the advent of the worldwide web. Mobile Internet, broadband and mobile technology have forever revolutionized how the media gets it’s news but even more importantly, how news is assimilated by the world. The media has been in an evolutionary metamorphosis for a few years now but it’s only now, in the midst of an economic crisis that it has it come full cycle and do we get to see just how the face of global media has changed. Gone are the days when you digested the goings on of the world over your cornflakes and once more at dinnertime. Welcome to the days of news on the go. Gone are the days when commuter heads were obscured behind the headlines, now it’s eyes down on the Blackberry, iPhone, mini laptop, N95 and more. 

 As newspapers decline and the Internet powers on, more and more editors are screaming for their online content. Tellingly, Guardian.co.uk will be hosting a summit in March entitled “Survive or thrive, change your digital strategies” the salient motto of which is ‘do not get left behind’. What has become blindingly evident in recent years is that those who don’t embrace the changes do get left behind. Back in November Scotsman.com lost half their online traffic as a result of a controversial redesign of the site and it’s no surprise that whilst the Express’ online resource is regarded by some as, “one of the worst in the UK” (step forward Roy Greenslade, Guardian media commentator), 2008 saw a steady decline in their circulation and a contentious mass redundancy. The same year saw drastically different fortunes for the likes of The New York times who opted not to boost sales of the paper and went with it’s website to break the story of Senator Eliot Spitzer’s resignation after a prostitute scandal. Which meant, that for almost an entire news cycle, they had exclusivity on one of the biggest U.S. stories of the year and scooped the Online News Association award as a result. The presence of these online awards is in itself an indicator of the importance magazines and newspapers now have to place on an online ‘presence’.

It has to be said then that the reporter on the ground is no longer the biggest cog in the media machine. Papers and magazines now have to consider the psychologies of the surfer, amass the hits that will get the advertising revenue rolling in. Black and white print on tomorrows chip paper will no longer suffice as a market strategy. Search engines and their ‘hit lists’ become the as relevant as as the “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” cries of the 20^th century.  Online traffic has become more and more important as has web design and ‘the online presence’, along with video feeds and juxtaposed links. The reader now has a viable input with text polls now a popular feature of Sky News broadcasts. Radio stations are also following suit, making shows more interactive than ever, utilising email and web facilities to create content. Heck, even the traffic reports now come from the poor souls trapped in jams around the UK frantically texting and emailing to save others from their frustrated fate. Never before has an industry been so dramatically forced to change it’s fortunes by embracing the technologies threatening to make it defunct.

 But let’s not forget that whilst the next generation of journalist may have to perform more of a balancing act than their predecessors, their jobs are made significantly easier when the world and all of its knowledge is just the touch of a button away. I fear the World Encyclopedia may just be the next casualty in the technological revolution.