The digital media has, without a doubt, transformed the traditional habits of the professional journalist and the old business standards of the companies dedicated to broadcast the news.
Now the individual work of each platform is not conceived without its convergence with other media, that is, the mixture of the printed with digital, and at the same time, these two with the audiovisuals of the radio and television.
And that’s why the editors or programmers of digital sites can’t let go of the forms or habits that have prevailed in these platforms and are compelled to write texts, narrate stories in videos, create podcasts with graphics, texts or vocal narrations and have their own presence, for opinion purposes, on the most popular Internet pages, such as Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.
The change for adaptation, however, is not as easy as it seems. For traditional journalists who have worked for more than thirty or forty years in the printed scheme, these radical variations of habits often imply difficulties associated with learning to manage themselves around social media.
It’s advisable to promote courses and workshops to empower them about the new formats and languages that allow them to be in tune with the preferences of the users of these outlets and train them in the takings of photos and videos and even in the editing of those audiovisual contents.
We speak about the multimedia journalist, prepared to inform from any platform, but distinguishing the particular characteristics and audiences, the customs of the public and the general news from the “creative news”.
From the same event, different stories or angles can be extracted that are segmented and offered in multiple ways, such as short video stories or an audio-graphic summary or very precise details of an outstanding element of the news.
The head of the multimedia journalist has to be prepared to handle this diversity of ways of approach, without ever losing sight of the quality, accuracy, veracity or objectivity of those news, which is what guarantees our profession. As the social media has turned into a fundamental source of information and a huge outlet for the distribution of the news and other content, we must always be aware of the reliability of such information to avoid reproducing deceitfulness or manipulated stories that affect the credibility of the multimedia broadcasts managed by professional journalists.
Translated from spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 