Ten things every journalist should know in 2010
This is an update on a post I wrote at the beginning of last year – Ten things every journalist should know in 2009. I still stand by all those points I made then so consider the following 10 to be an addendum.
1. How to monitor Twitter and other social media networks for breaking news or general conversations in your subject area using tools such as TweetDeck. Understand and use hashtags.
2. You are in control. Don’t become a slave to technology, make it your slave instead. You will need to develop strategies to cope with information overload – filter, filter, filter!
3. You are a curator. Like it or not, part of your role will eventually be to aggregate content (but not indiscriminately). You will need to gather, interpret and archive material from around the web using tools like Publish2, Delicious and StumbleUpon. As Publish2 puts it: “Help your readers get news from social media. More signal. Less noise.”
4. Your beat will be online and you will be the community builder. Creating communities and maintaining their attention will increasingly be down to the efforts of individual journalists; you may no longer be able to rely on your employer’s brand to attract reader loyalty in a fickle and rapidly changing online world (see 7).
5. Core journalistic skills are still crucial. You can acquire as many multimedia and programming skills as you want, but if you are unable to tell a story in an accurate and compelling way, no one will want to consume your content.
6. Journalism needs a business model. If you don’t understand business, especially the business you work for, then it’s time to wake up. The reality for most journalists is that they can no longer exist in a vacuum, as if what they do in their profession is somehow disconnected from the commercial enterprise that pays their wages (one side effect of journalists’ attempts to ‘professionalise’ themselves, according to Robert G Picard). That does not mean compromising journalistic integrity, or turning into solo entrepreneurs; rather it means gaining an understanding of the business they are in and playing a part in moving it forward.
As former Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves said in his excellent speech to Warwick Business School last year: “You cannot be an editor in today’s media environment without also being a businessman. It might say editor on my business card, but really, I am in the business of making news profitable and budgets, targets and performance are as important to me as words and newsprint.”
OK, you may not be an editor yet but that is no excuse, and it is probably easier to innovate while you are still working on the coalface without managerial responsibilities. Plus, in some cases, your editor may be part of the problem.
7. You are your own brand – brand yourself online! I’m not talking bylines here – you need to build yourself an online persona, one that earns you a reputation of trustworthiness and one that allows you to build fruitful relationships with your readers and contacts. You can no longer necessarily rely on having a good reputation by proxy of association with your employer’s brand. And your reputation is no longer fleeting, as good as your last big story – there is an entire archive of your content building online that anyone can potentially access.
Obvious ways to do this: Twitter, Facebook, personal blogging, but you can also build a reputation by sharing what you are reading online using social bookmarking sites like Publish2 and delicious (see 3).
8. You need to collaborate! Mashable suggests seven ways news organisations could become more collaborative outside of their own organisations, but this could also mean working with other journalists in your own organisation on, for example, multimedia projects as MultimediaShooter suggests or hook up with other journalists from other publications as Adam Westbrook suggests to learn and share new ideas.
9. Stories do not have to end once they are published online. Don’t be afraid to revise and evolve a story or feature published online, but do it transparently – show the revisions. And don’t bury mistakes; the pressure to publish quickly can lead to mistakes but if you admit them honestly and openly you can only gain the respect of your readers.
10. Technology is unavoidable, but it is nothing to fear and anyone of any age can master the basics. If you do nothing else, set up a WordPress blog and experiment with different templates and plugins – I promise you will be amazed at what you can achieve and what you can learn in the process.
Learn more practical advice on the future of journalism at our news:rewired event at City University in London on 14 January 2010.
Similar posts:
- Update on Wired Journalists’ new look; Publish2 claims it now has 20 per cent of all journalists in the US
- Editor&Publisher: Bill Keller says future of NYTimes’ public editor still ‘much debated’
- Ten things every journalist should know in 2009
- Q&A with Vikki Chowney: Centaur’s new site Reputation Online
- Journalism Daily: Guardian Q&A, Wired Journalists’ new look, Google News re-indexing
January 4th, 2010 at 10:22 am
[...] Update: see Ten things every journalist should know in 2010 [...]
January 4th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Interesting article, not least because none of the above have anything to do with your actual journalism, but everything to do with building a particular journalist as a saleable brand. Oh dear.
January 4th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
[...] von Journalism.co.uk können sich Journalisten auf das neue Jahr vorbereiten – mit der Liste Ten things every journalist should know in 2010. Ich finde sie sehr herausfordernd, sie verlangt von einem Journalisten des Jahres 2010: 1. How to [...]
January 4th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Hmm, let’s see…
- Journalistic skills – sure hope so
- Own brand (taiwanreporter.com) – check
- WordPress blog (taipeh.wordpress.com) – check (It’s German.)
- Twitter (taiwanreporter) – check
- Facebook… may I be the last person not to be there? Will change soon!
- “You are in control” – Sometimes I feel like I am not even in control of my accounts’ passwords anymore.
But thanks for the encouraging words!
January 4th, 2010 at 2:38 pm
@Stefan
Numbers 1, 2 and perhaps 8 are connected to research while 5 is journalism at it’s core.
January 4th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
[...] across this “Ten things every journalist should know in 2010″ feature by John Thompson. It’s worth a read. If you lean toward the traditional you [...]
January 4th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
[...] Ten things every journalist should know in 2010 | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog Your beat will be online and you will be the community builder. Creating communities and maintaining their attention will increasingly be down to the efforts of individual journalists; you may no longer be able to rely on your employer’s brand to attract reader loyalty in a fickle and rapidly changing online world (see 7). (tags: journalism socialmedia media twitter blogging facebook technology journalist beatblogging) [...]
January 5th, 2010 at 3:52 am
@Stefan: Really? Seems to me that while #7 is about marketing yourself and building a brand, and #10 is about training yourself in new skill sets, the other eight are all directly related to the practice of journalism as a craft.
January 5th, 2010 at 5:59 am
[...] list of 10 Things Every Journalist Should Know In 2010 includes several excellent observations, but here’s a couple that really jumped out at me: [...]
January 5th, 2010 at 9:28 am
@Erik @Stefan #7 is not just about marketing yourself – “you need to build yourself an online persona, one that earns you a reputation of trustworthiness and one that allows you to build fruitful relationships with your readers and contacts”.
Familiarising yourself with a platform like WordPress (#10) is not just about learning some technical skills either. The real value is in experimenting with different plugins to better market your posts online and to engage your readers.
January 5th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
[...] propósito del fantástico post 10 cosas que los periodistas deben saber en 2010, dos colegas que se definen 1.0 me comentaron vía MSN que las ideas de John Thompson eran [...]
January 5th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
[...] Ten things every journalist should know in 2010 "If you don’t understand business, especially the business you work for, then it’s time to wake up. The reality for most journalists is that they can no longer exist in a vacuum, as if what they do in their profession is somehow disconnected from the commercial enterprise that pays their wages (one side effect of journalists’ attempts to ‘professionalise’ themselves, according to Robert G Picard). That does not mean compromising journalistic integrity, or turning into solo entrepreneurs; rather it means gaining an understanding of the business they are in and playing a part in moving it forward." (tags: journalism socialmedia blogging technology) [...]
January 5th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
[...] Journalisten und andere: RT @journalismnews Ten things every journalist should know in 2010 http://bit.ly/4T3R7S Tagged: fresh | [...]
January 5th, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Great post. These ideas apply not just for journalists, but for information communicators in the sciences, health care and other service professions.
January 5th, 2010 at 10:38 pm
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January 5th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
@John Thompson: Good point.
January 5th, 2010 at 11:54 pm
Growth in citizen journalism requires traditional journalists to collaborate and join citizen journalist sites like http://iseeireportnews.ning.com/
January 6th, 2010 at 10:38 am
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January 6th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
[...] a related note, John Thompson posits Ten things every journalist should know in 2010 – Again, many are rephrased ideas that have been pounding at the shores of journalism's fortress [...]
January 6th, 2010 at 9:13 pm
An interesting post. Again, as several have indicated, this is not so much about journalism and the craft as it is about remaining viable in a world that no longer sees — or allows — the value of such a craft.
This is “marketing yourself, 101″, not, “how to be a better journalist.”
Using new media to do your job isn’t “how to be be a better journalist,” it’s “how to be a journalist, period.” It’s a given, and the mere fact that you feel you have to lay out methods of sourcing here to people using new tech goes a long way to explaining the shortcomings of modern reporting (and, in truth, probably the bulk of reporters for decades.)
It should be a given that journalists adapt and adopt. We’re supposed to be learning new things all the time. We’re supposed to be contacting and adapting new sources all the time.
And, while conveyance of the message after the fact is obviously essential, you’ll learn 10 times as much about getting the information in the first place from existing sources on reporting (Eric Nalder’s notes on investigative reporting and William Blundell’s system of questioning outlined in ‘The Art and Craft of Feature Writing’ both come to mind.
What shouldn’t be a given is acquiescing, as the author does here, to the “new reality.”
Here’s another idea: change the reality.
Maybe the best approach IS going solo, if it gets you out from under the thumb of a media that values speed over content.
Or perhaps the best approach is to go to those organizations you know will recognize the need for a properly craft, informative press, and trying to set up your own organization using a non-profit model, much like public television and radio.
There are far better options than merely staying positive and going with the flow, at least if you have self-respect, dignity and a sense of purpose to what you do. Plus, there’s more common sense in it, unless you eventually want to be boiled down by your owners to the lowest, most-profitable common denominator.
January 6th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
[...] of the UK journoblog journalism.co.uk has written–for the second year in a row–a post called Ten Things Every Journalist Should Know and it's definitely worth a read. Some of the suggestions here feel dated to me, like the first [...]
January 7th, 2010 at 12:29 am
[...] January, 2010 · Leave a Comment Here’s my take on John Thompson’s Ten things every journalist should know in 2010 posted over at journalism.co.uk this week (see also Vadim Lavrusik’s 8 Must-Have Traits of [...]
January 8th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
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January 9th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
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January 9th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
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January 9th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
[...] useful resolutions. Judy Sims has resolutions for news executives; and Gina Chen, Adam Westbrook, John Thompson and Adam Sullivan all have some tips for journalists to improve and adapt in the new [...]
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January 11th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
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January 12th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
[...] smart 8 Must-Have Traits of Tomorrow’s Journalist and John Thompson’s concise Ten Things Every Journalist Should Know in 2010. Poynter posted a lively list of 100 Things Journalists Should Never Do, and Adam Westbrook added a [...]
January 13th, 2010 at 3:25 am
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January 18th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
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January 18th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
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January 19th, 2010 at 4:19 am
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January 20th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
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January 21st, 2010 at 5:58 pm
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January 21st, 2010 at 11:32 pm
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January 23rd, 2010 at 12:59 pm
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January 26th, 2010 at 5:58 am
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January 26th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
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January 28th, 2010 at 5:32 am
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January 30th, 2010 at 2:13 am
[...] Ten things every writer should undergo in 2010 | Journalism.co.uk … [...]
May 29th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
[...] on what one should know about media in the journalism and PR professions. I came across another top 10 list. After I read this list I again realized that everything mentioned on this list has in some way, [...]
June 3rd, 2010 at 2:10 pm
To Point 4: It is no so easy at it seems. I am not a journalist. But I know from my Blog website that this is a very hard way. First step is to found some people who can read your stories. Maybe you have good and intersting informaitons for the reader – but nobody knows about you and your online-project. Building a reading communitie is in my point of view the hardest step!
July 7th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
Re No 7: You are your own brand.
I know what you are saying but at the same time this seems to be received internet wisdom without anyone questioning if it is right for them or perhaps even limiting them in the long run:
“I am not a brand!”
And here’s why:
http://www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com/2010/06/08/manifesto/
Thankyou.