NYT's Tom Friedman: In Today's Media, you have to 'work harder and smarter and develop new skills faster'

New York Times economic columnist Tom Friedman is always wringing his hands about how the United States is falling behind the rest of the world--in everything.

This week, he wrote a column that combined this familiar refrain with his thoughts on the recent political conventions held by the Democrats and Republicans.

One paragraph caught my attention:

"I covered the Republican convention, and I was impressed in watching my Times colleagues at how much their jobs have changed. Here’s what a reporter does in a typical day: report, file for the Web edition, file for The International Herald Tribune, tweet, update for the Web edition, report more, track other people’s tweets, do a Web-video spot and then write the story for the print paper. You want to be a Times reporter today? That’s your day. You have to work harder and smarter and develop new skills faster."

He's right.

Nothing stays the same in today's media environment. There's always a new platform to reach your audience. There are always new skills that you need to have, or at the very least, need to have basic knowledge.

That's one of the goals of our class, to make sure you walk away feeling comfortable with the digital tools of the moment, and have the confidence to try the tools of the future.

Why We Are Emphasizing Video This Semester

One of the goals of the Spring 2012 News Production & Management is to get everyone involved with video. We all should leave the class with at leas one video experience.
This experience can be you in a news video (either telling a story or using video as a companion to a written story).
You can interview someone in a video. You can have two people debate in a video.
A few weeks ago, the New York Times announced that it is "embracing" video as a primary reporting tool. That's right, a print product is going to stress video, at least for its online components.
If it is good enough for the New York Times, it's good enough for the Menlo Oak.
Check out the Beet.TV interview with the Times editorial director of video & TV on this shift.
Also, click here to for a story and video on how the non-profit group  One Laptop Per Child is developing a low-cost(in some cases around $100)  tablet so kids in the world's poorest countries can connect with technology, and the organization hopes, a brighter future.
Please watch the video. I think it is too long at six minutes, but it is a good online video, even with all the crowd noise in the background. I bet the writer is using his smartphone camera to shoot the video.

NYT Story: Clever Corporate Communications, Good Idea or bad Idea: Talk Among Yourselves

The New York Times had a great story last week. The web headline was, "New-Form Press Release, in Blog, Tweet and Haiku."
The heart of the story centered on how offbeat writing styles for press releases are creating buzz (do we need to define buzz? OK buzz means people are talking about it) in the worlds of social networking and public relations.
Now this offbeat style isn't widespread. This isn't happening in the button-up world of Wall Street. But funny, snarky, poetic and offbeat press releases are all the rage in Silicon Valley.
Click here to read the story. Please post your thoughts about the story. Here are a few questions to think about and, if you want, answer.

1. Is it better to have mastered writing a traditional press release before offering up a playful one?
2. Why do you think Silicon Valley has embraced this trend and Wall Street hasn't?
3. Can you give an example of when an off-beat press release would be OK? Can you give me an example when an off-beat press release could be seen as offensive?