For 31 years, Brad Kalbfeld was a distinguished correspondent for AP in Europe, including in The Vatican and in Poland. Author of the Associated Press Broadcast Style Book, Kalbfeld shared a wealth of historical information and the ever-changing world of journalism.
Kalbfeld discussed the use of technology in his coverage of the Pope back in 1982. His laptop of the day was in fact a typewriter — a clunky device not quite as convenient or portable as his MacBook today.
His audio tape recorder of the day was clunkier, and even heavier.
He went on to show us the complicated and cumbersome laptop that was actually a big leap in utility and convenience for his journalism work, though to the more modern journalist it looked simply archaic and indiscernible.
Back in the day, Kalbfeld explained, the equipment for a journalist was heavy, expensive, and not easy to access or use. These were all a huge contrast to his next example — his phone. The Iphone was his next piece of show-and-tell, and showed just how fast and easy it is to work and communicate as journalists today.
This was all done to explain how the modern world of journalism has changed. The new model for journalism skips out on many of the filters, editors, and other controls for what is shown or shared with the reader. This has caused a scrambling from the major news corporations; and the editors that were once empowered are now at the mercy of the writers and even non-journalist writers.
The editors are no longer in charge of what’s available in news.
- How can the editors compete?
- Readers now judge what they read and drive the process
- Changes how news is spread and the quality of dissemination
We, the up-and-comings, the diverse, the readers and the fans are now the face of journalism.
- We make the judgements
- We have control of what is news
- We have power where the readers/viewers of the past didn’t
This is a one-click world, and news writers have to compete for their audience more now than ever. One advantage to this is that people who once didn’t have the voice or ability to share their expertise now do. There is source material from all sorts of people, both experts and those who share a great interest on the topics.
The citizen journalist brings a huge advantage to the dissemination of news simply because they are present. News groups don’t always have such wide access — they only have a certain number of reporters. Where these groups don’t have the ability to cover as much as they want, the citizen journalist is almost certainly there.
Judging where the news is coming from, the credibility and scope of the source, has become paramount to housekeeping for the expert journalists — and even how news is viewed in general.
Leave a Reply