Katie Rogers of Medill News Service writes:
Peter Perl, assistant managing editor for personnel at The Washington Post, visited our newsroom and didn’t exactly sugarcoat the current state of the news business. (Just suffice it to say we didn’t file out of the conference room with a corner office on 15th.) It’s called content now, not stories, Perl said. Processing content rather than newsgathering and writing. It’s a new language he admits has taken some getting used to.
“It’s like the stages of grief,” Perl told us. “You have to make peace with that.”
Maybe I’m misreading this, but I don’t think a switch from talking about stories to talking about content is anything to grieve. Instead, isn’t it just a recognition of the fact that journalism takes many forms, and the conventional story is only one of them?
Hey Erik,
I think maybe I should have mentioned the fact that Perl is a 30-year vet of the Post, and is someone who has had to adapt to a rapidly-changing newsroom. I think for mid-to-late-career journalists, the change has been jarring. That doesn’t mean that a lot of these people aren’t great at grasping new, web-friendly lingo, but I think it would still be really hard shift and re-focus on completely new territory. Embracing something new usually comes with letting something else go … so I think that’s what he meant by stages of grief.
Thanks for the comment on the Medill site. Take care.
Katie
Ah — I interpreted the reference to “grief” differently. Yes, that does make sense. Thanks for the note…