Why Rory Cellan-Jones Didn’t Turn Out To Be Morpheus

 

I was dreading BBC Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones’s visit to Cardiff University last week. I know we have heard over this series of lectures that the online revolution is not going to render everything which has gone before it obsolete, sweeping away old journalistic values and practices in a tidal wave of new technology. Hell I have even written blogs saying as much.

But Rory Cellan-Jones, I feared, might think differently. He is one of the high priests of online journalism, mightn’t he demand an end to all the old ways and demand in fire and brimstone terms we convert or be damned?

In my head I was actually imagining a situation like this.

Red/blue pill time, the starkest of choices, wake in my bed believing whatever I want to believe or stay in Wonderland and see how deep the rabbit hole goes?

Thankfully there was no such decision to be made. Quite aside from the fact that Mr Cellan-Jones was not an insufferable poser, wearing sun glasses indoors and waffling on in empty pseudo-intellectual platitudes, he made it clear that much of what is currently important to journalists will continue to be so.

He talked about, “the old endurance skills..many of which are still relevant to this day.”

He insisted that those in editorial positions should not be swayed by “Most Read” sections on websites and should retain a sense of pride in their own editorial judgments.

The biggest thing I took away from his talk was the vital need not to throw the journalistic baby out with the old-technology bathwater.

It seems he is not the only one keen to get this message across. On the same day he was addressing us in Cardiff, the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) was beginning a two day conference in Manchester, the centrepiece of which was to reveal the findings of a major survey into how journalism training should evolve to meet the needs of the multimedia newsroom.

The survey found overwhelmingly that the skills most concerning employers were traditional. They included the ability to find one’s own stories, use of language, writing, media law and newsgathering.

Perhaps most startling of all was the employers’s insistence that shorthand should remain a key part of journalistic training. This article on holdthe frontpage.co.uk highlights this particular issue but more generally the tone of the piece reflects the continuing obsession with traditional skills, summed up by Manchester Evening News editor Paul Horrocks:

Things that can be given away may be less time on modern processes such as video journalism. We can teach that.

Similar sentiments are expressed by Colin McKinnon, learning and development manager for editorial at The Age newspaper in Australia, quoted in this Press Gazette piece:

McKinnon warned against getting too “hung up” on technology and forgetting the basics of journalism, such as fact-checking, fairness and balance.

Of course it could be argued these news editors and training managers are hopelessly out of touch, clinging onto the past with the same misguided zeal with which people tried to pack suitcases as the Titanic went down.

Look at the title of the Press Gazette piece, “Decade of hell”, or this Economist piece “Who killed the newspaper?”

With its tales of young Brits turning away from newspapers and investment banks attacking even the most revered papers for their tumbling share prices it makes pretty gloomy reading.

But back we turn to Mr Cellan-Jones and in fact the recurring lesson I have learnt from this series of online journalism lectures over the last few weeks.

Yes things are changing. But if we forget who we are, what we do best and why we do what we do, then we might as well start waving the white flag right now.

Oh God that sounded like something Morpheus would say..