The journalist of the future will be a plug point

Actually it’s really the journalist of now, not actually the future. since the future is already here as far as media innovations and technological developments are concerned. I’m at ex-fashionista, but no less fashionable, Dion Chang’s Flux Trends Review 2007 which has tried to give business (today) and consumers (tomorrow) a snapshot of current trends in the market/society (from economics to politics, media, marketing and consumers). Nice idea and highly entertaining and forthright presentations by all concerned, especially political analyst Justice Mahlala who interspersed his thoughts on the period of ‘Days of Disgrace’ of the current Presidency to the leadership battle for the ANC and next President in December, with Zapiro cartoons of the main players.

Irwin Manoim managed to sum up newspaper trends very nicely, explaining how newspapers currently reflect the health of the entire media industry, ergo, if newspapers are diseased, the rest of the media industry will catch it too and suffer. He based his opinions on a lot of stats and the fact that while people are reading a lot more, they’re not reading or consuming mainstream media more, ie, newspapers and television, but online. The top news sites search globally are not newspaper sites either, with esteemed editors at the helm, but search engine news aggregators that use software search bots.

He also summarised aspects of what came out of the World Association of Newspaper (WAN) conference earlier this year very nicely. Journalists now – in mostly mainstream media, but filtering down to online and trade media too – are going out with notebook and pen, laptop, webcam and mic, digital camera, tape recorder and cellphone – and sometimes the cellphone is also the video tool and recorder. They’re then filing a media flash or headline via their cell, writing a story for their website from their laptop and then when they get back to the office, editing up a vlog (video) and podcast (radio), only then writing up analysis for their print title.

Finally got to meet Toby Shapsak, the editor of Stuff and media maven. He’s very helpful, even pointed out I don’t need my 3G aerial necessarily. With 3G connectivity what it is, I’d stand on my chair and waive my laptop around my head while doing the can-can if it would get me a better bloody signal and more bandwidth! Anyway Shapsak addressed the fact that we’re all playing in a ‘digital kindergarten’ at present while talking about the ‘next big things’ in the online/technology and media space. I’ll go into more detail for my lead story for Monday’s Bizcommunity.com.