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.

Social Media Fueling Resurgence of Infographics

Conventional wisdom said that infographics, those one-page, visual delights that packed lots of information into drawings and illustrations, were just about dead.

Social media looks as if it might change all of that.

BuzzMgr is a new firm that takes social media information and transforms it into great looking graphics. Here's what it did with information generated by the Republican convention. Take a look at how BuzzMgr captured the first night of the Democrat's convention.

Here's how BuzzMgr's founder, Kathleen Hessert  describes the goals of her company. 

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.

They covered up 'radio' in the sign at NPR headquarters

It's about time.
This photo was tweeted by a Los Angeles-based NPR producer.  “A picture tells a thousand words: ‘National Public Radio’ painted over by NPR at HQ,” the tweet stated.
In 2008 Jane Stevens led workshops with NPR  staff on how to shift from being a radio-centric journalism organization into a web-centric journalism organization.
Basically, Stevens and others asked the NPR staff to rethink how they tell stories and how their stories reach their audience.
It is an understatement that there was resistance to the whole idea. If the LA producer's tweet is any indication, there is still some anger about the shift in emphasis.
"Back in the days that there was just radio, your station was the only point of entry to all this content," Robert Spier, director of content development for NPR Digital Media told writers for the American Journalism Review. "You couldn't get NPR except through your station because it was only available on radio, and radio was time and geographically bound." Today, of course, "the user expects to be in control of his or her experience."
That has NPR rethinking how it operates. That's a good thing and what needs to be done if NPR is to survive in the digital age.
According to poynter.org, an NPR spokeswoman said the panel reading “National Public Radio” has been covered for several years. The new permanent sign has NPR’s logo and address.
The NPR staff, really, the entire journalism community, needs to embrace the digital age. There is no going back to the good old days.