The article as luxury or byproduct

Journalism has been under a lot of pressure in the last few years. First bloggers came along who were faster than traditional mediaoutlets. With the rampant succes of social media, things got worse.

Live coverage of events is widely available. Eye witnesses tweet away while events unfold. Yet media outlets keep thinking in terms of articles and edited video segments.

Articles are wonderful. But they are no longer necessary for every event. They were a necessary form for newspapers and news shows but not the free flow, the never-starting, never-ending stream of digital. Sometimes, a quick update is sufficient; other times a collection of videos can do the trick.

via The article as luxury or byproduct « BuzzMachine.

I doubt whether change will come fast to media as it’s not easy to turn an industrially scaled newsmachine around. Yet some people try. Belgian newspaper De Tijd uses storify to tell stories. Roland Legrand and Raphael Cockx seem to be on the cutting edge of new storytelling by newspapers.

It seems like new storytelling is more a matter of individual journalists than of news organizations. Maybe, staying in the vocabulary of mr Jarvis, there is a place for entrepreneurial journalism. Within or outside the organization.

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