Newsrooms that once functioned under a cloud of cigarette smoke now work in a cloud computing environment. Writers who once tucked a reporter’s notebook in their back pocket now wield a digital voice recorder or a Flip camcorder. Editors who once red-lined copy and haggled over how headlines matched the lead art now stress over web analytics and keyword selection.
eMedia Vitals’ Rob O’Regan, who has close to 30 years experience as a journalist, has created a chronology of the journalism roles he has undertaken, the skills developed, the performance indicators and the tools required – from 1982-3 as a cub reporter, armed with a reporter’s notebook and an ashtray through his time as a news editor in 1994-6, where the newsroom’s Toshiba T1000 notebook had to be signed out for road trips.