Embrace change, it happens

Wrong-way-sign

Storytelling is changing, so says the headline in a Journalistics post by Bethany Bengtson. Yes, of course she’s right, but I like her point. Some journalists have spent too much time lamenting new forms of publishing technology, like the web, blogging and social media, but storytelling will continue to evolve at a blistering pace. Get used to it, my friends.

Oh, and Bethany advises you also embrace shorter form content, keeping those blog posts under 500 words. Man, I hope she doesn’t take offense to this long post or this one.

Speaking of change, Jim Brady is no longer at TBD. We’ve followed TBD from the beginning, and you could count us as fans of their work. TBD Publisher Robert Allbritton said he and Brady had some “stylistic differences,” and it would seem Allbritton wants to focus more on original content. Under Brady, TBD was/is all about aggregation and technology.

While I doubt the talented staff there will lose sight of what’s over the horizon, the article surfaced a few questions for me. 1. Can news orgs afford to focus on just one of these – content, aggregation or technology? 2. If newsroom leaders must focus on more than one, how do they balance the attention each important aspect receives?

What are your thoughts?

Image by statianzo.

Posted on Monday, Nov 8, 2010 by