Gary Andrews

Otherwise known as a quick, likely-to-be-ill-thought-out, ill-informed pondering on the state of the media industry.

Everywhere media-related seems to be making cutbacks. Even places that you would normally have put down as safe are tightening their belts. Friends, colleagues and people I don’t know but have heard of are all getting laid off, and many of these have surprised given, given their jobs.

It’s not just that we’re in a global recession. It’s also that this industry really doesn’t know where the hell it’s going. Journalism. Broadcasting. PR. None of them safe. Or with any real idea of where they meant to be going.

If this were an interview and the media was asked where it would be in five years time, it’d have a hard job in answering. If it were then asked where it saw itself in ten years time, it’d find the question impossible to answer.

You do wonder if the skills you’ve been trained in, and others you’ve picked up along the way, will be completely redundant in the not-too-distant future.

Everywhere seems to be in trouble. We’re constantly told online is the future – and it IS the future – but it just doesn’t seem to be entirely sure how it wants to be the future.

I have an inkling things will pick up. Not in the sense of green shoots of recovery, but more to do with the fact that when this recession, and downturn and general media crisis of identity is over, there will be a need for quality journalism, PR and broadcasting.

Sadly this need will be because there will probably be huge holes in the market by this stage and, as with any good market, where there’s a hole and a demand, something will inevitably plug it.

So, yes, there will be an upturn. At some point. But when is anybody’s guess. If this were a Hollywood war movie, the sergeant would turn his face away and to the ground and sadly say: “We lost a lot of good men out there.”

At this stage it’s common for a blogger to offer his twopence worth on “hey, but this is how you can get through it.”

If only it were that easy.

All those of us in the industry – be it journalism, PR, broadcasting or a combination of some or all of these – can do is watch, learn, adapt to developments (both online and offline), try innovative stuff, and never ever compromise on quality or belief that nobody else, to quote Carly Simon, nobody does it better, no matter what we do. There, by the grace of God, we will survive. Hopefully.

(Then again, you do wonder if any print papers will survive when you read something like this.)

If anybody has any idea what they think this industry will look like in five to ten years type, please do leave a comment below. I’ll post my own thoughts at some point in the near future.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: future of journalism, future of the media, newspaper, PR, recession

“Mate,” said my colleague Ben, when I told him about being invited back to the old student paper I edited to do a talk on the future of journalism and how to get into in. “You know you’ve made it when your old university invites you back.”

“Chances are everybody else was busy,” said I. “And I’m cheap.”

It was an unexpectedly enjoyable surprise to find myself back at Cardiff University Students’ Union on a Saturday afternoon to speak to the section editors and writers of gair rhydd. It was also interesting from my own point of view, as I learned a few bits and pieces as well.

Before my waffle talk, Will Dean (The Guardian) and Greg Cochrane (ex-NME, now Radio 1), both ex-gair rhydd members, did their bit as well. What was telling was the amount of times words relating to the internet were thrown around. Podcasting was a common one. Blogging was another.

It shows how quickly the industry is moving these days. When I was editor, blogging was still very niche [1]. Podcasting hadn’t even entered our lexicon. Now Greg and Will are using these terms casually, as part of everyday work. None of us are journalists who’d been told this stuff was vital to our industry when we were learning the ropes.

You want proof of how the web has and will continue to shape journalism. You’ve just read it.

Interesting (and surprising) bit number two: When I asked how many people in the room were blogging, I had a couple of tentative hands. When I asked if any were on Twitter, no hands went up [2]. A few other social media sites elicited no response. On reflection, I think, I should have asked how may people had heard of these sites.

This surprised me somewhat, as I’d assumed (dangerous, I know) that many more journalism hopefuls were blogging in this day and age (when I did my BJTC course, I was the only blogger). I guess, when you spend so much of every day working in this area, you forget not everybody’s quite such of a web geek as yourself.

By the time I’d finally shut up, they’d seen Phillip Schofield explain what Twitter is and had their picture posted up on my Twitter stream.

They also had your crowdsourced advice (thanks to everyone who responded) and probably had it drummed into them that they needed to be online in some form, as well as learning as many different skills as possible, to increase their chances of employment in what is currently a very depressed industry, jobs-wise.

But it was also refreshing that, in the informal chat that followed, there was a lack of cynicism over blogging, Twitter, video sites like Qik and Seesmic, and other such places. Compare this with those currently employed in the industry. It can be tough to convince media people of the worth of these tools (its a common sigh I get from just about everybody I know who works with more web-based tools).

Granted, that attitude is changing, helped, in part, by more colleagues slowly trying (and, in many cases, getting addicted) these sites and reporting back on their worth. If you want a great example of a mainstream journalist utilising social media, look no further than Dan Wootton from the News of the World.

But for every Dan, or Ben in PR, there’s about half a dozen unconvinced hacks or press officers who either don’t have the time, the inclination or the web knowledge to leap in.

And that’s one of the joys about chatting to student journalists. They’re willing to listen; they’re willing to try new things. Ok, they may not get on with Twitter. They may decide that blogging isn’t for them. It’s the same for everybody. But they’re less likely to dismiss these communication tools, which, for me, is encouraging.

I had several queries about setting up blogs – the software to use, how to pick up readers, etc – and a few about assorted sites like Twitter. I had a long chat with the current editor about making their website more Web 2.0 friendly. And, hopefully, we’ll see a few of them blogging and Twittering in the coming weeks.

Here’s a quick list of those I spoke to yesterday who’ve already joined Twitter:

Ben Bryant (gair rhydd editor): @benbryant

Emma (Comment & Opinion editor): @emcetera

Tom Victor (Sorry Tom, I didn’t catch your section): @tomvictor

Feel free to stop by and say hi to them.

[1] Ok, you could argue it still is, in many respects. But back then few newspapers were leaping aboard the blogging bandwagon. It felt much like where Twitter was last year.

[2] I think this may have been out of shyness on a couple of parts. It’s taken me this long to accept I’m an utter geek (or nerdlinger, which Katie Lee uses often and I think fits nicely). I didn’t like to admit it that far back.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: blogging, future of journalism, gair rhydd, student journalists, students, Twitter

This weekend I’ll be heading back to the student paper I used to edit many moons ago. They’re getting a few of their more successful alumni, plus myself, back in for a day to give a mixture of training and presentations on how to get into journalism and where the media is going.

So, in true social media style, I thought I’d do a quick bit of crowdsourcing (I’ll also be asking on Twitter and, if a get a moment at home, Seesmic) and ask for your thoughts on this.

The question is broad but simple: What advice would you give to aspiring young journalists looking to get a foothold in the industry in this day and age?

Hopefully it’ll inspire a new generation of journalists to get using social media and the like to generate stories and interact with their readers / listeners / viewers. Either that or they’ll all be so Web 2.0 that they’ll start throwing shoes and rotten fruit at me as I bore them hell out of them.

Your thoughts on this: ready, set GO

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: future of journalism, getting into journalism, student journalism

Charles Arthur’s one piece of advice to aspiring journalists: learn to code. To which I’d say “Oh, God. Yes. Do.”

Ok, there are probably other pieces of advice that are equally as useful. But in the current climate, it’s as good a place to start as any.

There are many reasons why this makes sense. Like it or not, the media is increasingly looking for jack-of-all trades. Like it or not, there won’t be as many journalists around to do the work required of them. If you can work across as many platforms as possible (I’d also advise journalists to learn TV production techniques as well) then you have an advantage.

With journalism increasingly online (vague description, but as the media still hasn’t quite worked out where it’s going, it’ll do), it helps to have a knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes [1]. It’s not vital, it just helps.

Secondly, and this will sound a little woolly, assuming you company’s website is easy enough to tinker around with, it’ll enable you to do some seriously cool journalism-related stuff very quickly, without having to get somebody from IT to help.

Charles uses maps mashups as a good example. There’ll undoubtedly be blogs or other sites producing these; people will find them useful, they’ll search for them. It makes sense to have them available as quickly as possible.

Most importantly, Charles talks about how coding can save you enormous amount of time on assorted amount of journalism jobs – subbing, formatting, pulling in data, and the like. This comment neatly explains why setting up assorted coded bits and pieces can be so useful. Anything that saves time without cutting quality in the media these days is beyond useful.

I’d expand what Charles says to anybody in the media. With a work hat on (PR) I’m often asked about assorted bits and bobs that are web-centric and would be very cool indeed if we’re able to pull them off. Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don’t.

And it’s at these times I wish I knew more about coding and had made an effort  to learn when I had more free time.

I can understand HTML, if not exactly to the extent that I’m confident enough to build stuff with it. I have a VERY basic understanding of CSS. And, er, that’s about it. A lot of what Charles is talking about on there has gone over my head, I’m afraid.

Yet this has given me enough freedom to tinker about and makes some neat and useful tweaks when needed. If I knew more, I’d happily sit away coding to produce cool bits and pieces.

Even if coding isn’t something you’re going to use on a regular basis, it’s still a piece of knowledge that could be (and is becoming increasingly) useful.

The downside: you’re regularly cited as an authority on anything technical. And try as I might, fixing a photocopier using any other method than kicking it, is, sadly, beyond me.

[1] So many print journalists I know have a fairly in-depth knowledge of their production process, which I find fascinating. And radio journalists have to get up to speed on basic broadcast engineering pretty quickly – because that desk or playout system will always fail at 5am in the morning and NEVER when the IT department have a quiet moment.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Charles Arthur, coding, future of journalism, journalism training

• A laptop
• A dongle
• Mobile phone
• Notepad and pen
• Transport (public or personal)
• Recording equipment and editing software (if working for broadcast)

And that’s it. Today’s journalist doesn’t need an office, they should, in theory, be able to work from wherever the news is, uploading straight to the web if needs be (via a sub or an editor, preferably). Newspapers, especially local ones, shouldn’t be wedded to the idea that the news goes out when they decide it goes out, because it’s never been easier or quicker to get the news out as it happens.

Look at the above kit. Other than perhaps the slightly more specialist broadcast-quality material (although that’s no longer the issue it once was, and if the footage is good, the footage is good) it’s something anybody can get together. Anybody can be a citizen journalist (misleading as that term is). The question is, how does traditional media respond to this?

The above was one small idea that came out of a long and fascinating conversation with Dina (from Tango ’til I’m sore) on the future of local journalism. She is a local journalist; I used to be one.

She’s also pretty well equipped, I’d say, to deal with wherever the hell journalism finds itself going in the next five years, as she has a pretty good understanding of how, where and why journalism needs to work and connect with the web.

After all the times I’ve used this blog for groaning at assorted local media (and, hopefully, praising them where praise is due), it’s always refreshing to meet somebody who works in that field and understands the importance of web, social media and other assorted online bits and pieces to journalism.

(And if you don’t think local media as we know it will change greatly over the coming years, read this from Jeff Jarvis then think again.)

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: future of journalism, journalism