Sunday, July 27, 2008

Resistance drives out young journalists

And it isn't only the young who encounter negative behavior in the face of technological change. Being angry and lashing out at people who accept that "things have changed" in mainstream media is not attractive. Also, the failure to be able to collaborate and work in a true "open source" way also poisons the atmosphere around lots of traditional journalism.

I've helped colleagues learn new skills and shown them how to bootstrap their skills. Instead of offers to collaborate or work with them, they get competitive. UGLY.

I don't think trying to get ahead at the expense of someone who helped you plays out well in an increasingly transparent world of social media.
clipped from www.pbs.org

“[Young journalists] are turned off by the tendency of veteran journalists to argue down new ideas, cling to old ways, and avoid risks,” she wrote. “As Readership Institute research has shown, those are outcomes of newspaper people’s tendencies to be oppositional, perfectionist and conventional. I’ve seen the generational friction play out dozens of times as younger voices get shut down by veterans who fall back on ingrained behaviors.”

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Journalists have been taught to be competitive--even within their own organizations--and now they are paying the price. Collaboration would have saved some of their careers.

Meanwhile, they are very frustrated because 10 years ago, they could have bailed out to PR or education. Now, their Luddite ways have made them unqualified for either.