Richard Burton

Editor, Jewish Chronicle. Former Editor, Telegraph.co.uk

This week I finally got it. It was helped along by listening to a set of Radio 4 programmes on the British newspaper industry, some strong words from course leader Matt Yeomans in our online workshop and finally by Richard Burton in today’s lecture. What am I on about? Well it’s that whilst the easy way to deal with all the new media technology of social networks, blogs and podcasts, is to stay well away…

New technology is absolutely central to today’s, and even more, tomorrow’s world of journalism. If I do not embrace new media technology, it will affect my employability as a journalist.

According to Richard, this ‘innate ability to get hold of new technology’ is expected of any wannabe journalist, and assuming I have this, the factor that will make me stand out from the crowd is how good I am at doing the basics of journalism. That means I need to be able to find a good story, write well, have excellent spelling and grammar, be able to conduct a very good interview etc.

I need to be both a very good journalist and able to use all this new technology. So I have to keep plugging away at improving my traditional journalistic skills (especially the spelling in my case), AND I must embrace and not fall into the trap of running scared of Flickr, Youtube, my blogs etc - as I think some are on the Diploma course are.