“Kill your media consultant” : Election2012

Yes, it's Republican Primary season : photo by Christopher Dilts for Obama for America

If you are ever anxious about the disappearing craft of journalism and your metaphorical engagement in horse-shoe manufacture during the age of space travel, comfort yourself with the sight of small town American libraries and school gyms heaving with a seemingly limitless throng of media talent. Like a roil of mating frogs in a pond, the ‘pack’ of press that trails around the Primaries, sucking up the West Wing atmosphere shows there is life in the old ecosystem yet. Given the vast numbers of reporters and huge resources thrown at the election, it is a grand time to watch out for digital trends and innovations which news organisations showcase during such events. I thought I would write a few down as an ongoing aide memoire as to which innovations stuck, and which fell by the wayside. Please feel free to add, disagree or amend.

Free advice for the New York Times on Occupy Wall Street.

I am sure the public editor of the New York Times will be thrilled to know that Monday is ‘free advice day’, so he is in luck with the question he posed this week in his column: Occupy Wall Street: How Should It Be Covered Now? . The piece includes some great advice from the men who were asked, and some even more good advice in the comments section, from the wider audience. But, as it’s free advice day I thought it would be wrong to pass up the opportunity.

In a post on Friday I suggested that OWS has some lessons for newsrooms,

How Wikileaks has woken up journalism.

If you follow the latest cache of diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks and reported by the Guardian, The New York Times and others it is impossible not to conclude that this is a pivotal moment for journalism, its teaching and its practice. In a masterly piece on The Guardian’s website, John Naughton writes that :

The most obvious lesson is that it represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing.