Few days back I got mail from a colleague of NewsX. He was one of the best journalist & prime anchor for the the news channel that time. After having conversation over Skype he told me a lot of things have changed, people are moving to online space. A lot of new online mediums like qz.com, scroll.in making good wave in India. He also mentioned that at few places where he went for interview, they asked him about data journalism & basics of web development i.e html/css.
What is this happening?
If we google a bit, it will not be difficult to find out :
1. Trends show online ad revenue will overtake print for Uk This similar trend will follow across globe sooner or later.
2. Every other day you will find famous print edition going only online like this
3. Mass level layoff happening at various media agencies like this
How can we survive?
The new age media is data driven & social. It gets to users as it comes. Some people call Twitter is the killer behind old age media, we got news of Bin Laden Death on Twitter before anywhere else. People are more interested & are connected to devices. It makes sense to move everything online.
What are the tools these days new media journalists are using?
Blog Blog Blog
Blog is the best way to let world know about your thoughts. Internet is full of platforms for publication WordPress, google, medium. Pick one of it, write interesting things there.
Data Driven
Todays world data plays key role & in journalism, mapping those data in more presentable way add 10X value. Check the softwares from http://projects.knightlab.com/#toolbox You can do awesome stuff with many such tools. But you will get your hands dirty with web technology as well. 🙂
Twitter/Facebook Others
These are the best medium to reach your potential audience, once you write a blog spread word about it in all these places. Create a page for yourself on Facebook, share your interesting stuff there. Follow interesting people on your domain out there on twitter, exchange your thoughts with them.
Audio/Video casts
Podcast is a best way to bring your thoughts on a topic to the word with audios. Softwares like audacity is excellent tool for same. Once you are done recording, add it to soundcloud & connect the feeds to iTunes. This will increase more audience.
Similarly using software like Google+ Hangouts on air, one can add a lot of participants in a discussion & later upload the same video for others to watch.
Build your audience, learn new technology is the only way to survive in this disruption.