Norgdom

Some bright sparks from Curtin’s Student Journalism Association have invited me to come along and give them a talk on PerthNorg next week.

It will be a panel discussion with Tim Gossage (Channel 10) Joanna Menagh (ABC) Victoria Laurie (The Australian) and myself. So I am vastly outnumbered in representing new media :S.

One of the things that becomes hard as you become so immersed in the concepts of citizen media, web 2.0 and collaborative news is to realise that we still live in an age where most people have not even heard of most of those terms.

I am also aware of the fact that I am talking to a group of students who most likely have a very idealised way of the importance of mainstream media. This will be where most of them will still want a job up after all.

I probably provide a very scary option for their future. If everyone can be a journalist, I’m sure they’ll be wondering what they spent the last three years of their lives doing (other than socialising at the Curtin Tav and eating George’s Kebabs.)

The thing is though, that it is these very students who need the skills to survive in the emerging media landscape. They’ll be the ones for whom those skills are most needed.

The old school way of communicating with the audience does not cut it in this space anymore. People want engaging, interactive, open and authentic voices.

The death of the myth of objectivity could not come sooner in my opinion. The more honest we all are in our influences the more truthful news becomes, as long as all sides to a story can be heard. To me that is when the truth becomes known. It is up to people to decide what they believe.

If anyone out there has some thoughts to contribute on my talk or if you want to throw me any curly questions in preparation - let me know. The last time I spoke in public was at a Year 12 debating competition on whether we have a moral obligation to save endangered animals.

I am taking strength from the fact that we were arguing for the negative and still won:)

On that note, I hope to see you round the norg ….

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 28th, 2006 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.