Amusing feature by Michael Parsons in the Times on what happens when you start working in online journalism. Ah, for the heady days of yesteryear:
Rule No 5: You are going to work harder
When I began in journalism, shortly after the end of the Crimean War, a staff writer would stroll into work at around eleven o’clock, place his buttonhole in an occasional whisky glass, put his feet up on the desk, and write perhaps three stories a week, with time for a spot of hunting. Now the digital robots who work for me record their podcast audio chunks on throat mikes on their way into work, strap digital video cameras on poles to their shoulders so they can interview themselves throughout the day, and rarely write less than five stories a day before starting on their feature work. Online journalists rise at five o’clock in the morning and rarely sleep during the week. What seems to work is to hire very young children who have never known anything better, and then work them so hard that they don’t have time to compare notes, form unions, or eat lunch. The web never closes, the web never sleeps, and neither will you. Sadly this is the only part of this article you should take seriously, but you won’t.
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Bob Boydston
3 years ago
Excellent point. With access 24/7 there is a constant demand for content. My only hope, as you have mentioned before, is that the quality of the journalism does not suffer.