Digital Journalism: The Time For Talk Is Done

I think – and I’ve heard many others echo the same thought back to me –
that we have to stop talking about whether these tools are useful
to journalists, and start using them to prove that they are.

The
danger we’re in right now is that many of the people who are most
conversant with these tools, and who are the biggest evangelists, for
them end up getting pulled away from the reporting positions into
central development functions. They stop doing, and start encouraging
others to do. But I think we need more leading by example. And we need
better documentation of good journalism done with new tools. And we
need to find better ways of sharing knowledge of how to use these tools
between journalists.

Let’s see if we can’t make the next six months the period when journalism really gets to grips with these new tools.