Although they converge in the same ecosystem, the parallel exercise of print and digital journalism is one of the best fields of trial and error in the process of true media convergence.
Scholars of this phenomenon predict that the metamorphosis will take longer than desired, because the models that work on both platforms differ in their production rates and the profiles of their audiences.
Albert Montagut, one of the most respectable researchers of these processes, delved deeply into the whole frame of the problems that gravitate towards convergence in his documented work “Reset” and drew some conclusions.
One of them is that, despite the reluctance to assume the merger by companies that manage both media, sooner or later “they will be forced to start a digital stage in which they will have to invest constantly to have the necessary resources. necessary for technology to develop at all times”.
Montagut has reviewed, from end to end, each of the factors that distance “traditional” print journalists from the “natives” who drive the use of digital technological tools.
And he has listed guidelines to stimulate unison work in identical areas or sections and in the same language, always making the rules, values and ideals of professional journalism prevail on both platforms.
“It is essential, he says, that newspapers have editors who are convinced of the change and editors who facilitate it. It is they, the owners or managers of the media, who must demand middle managers and editorial and financial management teams, who are capable, convinced and knowledgeable in both fields: print and digital”.
In short, that journalistic companies must work in the present “but thinking about the future”, knowing that this future will change constantly, pointing towards the digital, which is the basis that will endure from now on.
(Montagut has had the courtesy to gift and dedicate his books to me. And with his most recent, Reset, he wishes upon me to also experience “a rewarding reset”).
- Translated from Spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 