I’m not sure the ‘medium first, journalism second’ debate ever went away, sadly. I’ve heard recently about some print journalists bristling at the ‘break news and update’ method of web journalism because ‘wire reporting’ was beneath them.

I have my own issues with the 24-hours news cycle, and I was trained as a newspaper reporter. But I don’t know what planet these print folks have been on since the advent of radio and TV. The idea that you break news once a day?! How quaint.

However, the issue that I was trying to highlight here wasn’t that old yarn. This isn’t even necessarily about who is top dog in an integrated newsroom, although that is a point of conflict as newsroom integration proceeds. No, this is more of an issue of organisational change and innovation. It really is about mindset over skillset. This is even more important with the challenges that the news industry faces now.

Thanks for the comment. Maybe we journalism bloggers should big up our heroes, young and old?

I think it’s a shame that the old ‘medium first, journalism second’ debate is kicking up dust again.

I agree that this is wrongly often reduced to a ‘young tech savvy’ vs. ‘old media farts’ when, as you say, there is no real division.

In fact my experience seems, more and more, to be that a large proportion of young graduates aren’t tech savvy at all and actively negative to it. Whilst the older members of the newsroom are often first to line up to learn new skills.

When this debate flared up last time around the conservatism of J-students the consensus was that we needed new heroes for those people to learn from. Posts like Alans reminds us that there are a legion of Merandas out there we can point to.

It’s a shame that there aren’t more old school heroes drowning out the old media curmudgeons.