Editor’s Note: Valley Indy reporter Jodie Mozdzer is at the 2010 Society of Professional Journalists Convention in Las Vegas Mozdzer is the treasurer of the Connecticut SPJ Chapter.
Don’t be zombie journalists.
You know the type: Mind-numbed. Routine following. Most used phrase is “this is how we’ve always done it.”
It’s one piece of advice on how to shake up the journalism industry for the consumers’ benefit.
It came from a team of CNN suits during a session at the Society of Professional Journalists 2010 national convention at the Planet Hollywood hotel in Las Vegas.
The session was called “Smashing Silos” and panel members were:
- Victor Hernandez, director of domestic news gathering;
- Mike Toppo, senior director of news operations for CNN.com and
- Rich Barbieri, managing editor for CNN Money.
“You really have to shake things up,” Hernandez said. “We really need to lose the zombies.”
How?
In big newsrooms, journalists need to collaborate with different departments and teams. That means no more “web staff” and “print staff” at traditional newspapers. At CNN, that means television staffs and web staffs have to work together, Hernandez said.
In smaller newsrooms, where there’s probably already more collaboration, but less time to get all the work done, Toppo suggested focusing energy on “doing fewer things very well.”
Hernandez calls the new expectation an “all-platform journalist.”
Journalists are storytellers, who have to decide the best way to tell each individual story.
“You have to have a culture where the story wins,” Barbieri said.
If that means using Post-it notes to explain something complicated, so be it, Hernandez said.
(He’s referring to this video, where a man explains all six seasons of the show “Lost” using a three minute video and drawings on Post-it notes.)
“Why can’t we do that?” Hernandez asked.
