Finding inspiration for new forms of journalism

One thought that stayed with me came from Adam Tinworth, serial event blogger and RBI editorial development manager (ie. plays with social media a lot), who said that he was finding his ideas outside journalism of late, and found the journalism conversation stifling at times. Since I didn’t have pen and paper to hand, I’ve asked him to elaborate by email and I thought I’d share his excellent answers here.

Aside from containing the best one clause summary of my job ever, she explores the idea I raised: that I’m getting more inspiration from outside the journalism discussion than I am from within it. There’s a couple of points I’d like to add to what was said there:

1. In many ways, I’ve come full circle on this. Back in the days when I started working on this ([July 2006](http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/archives/2006/07/my_two_blogs.html), fact fans), the journo blogging world was much, much smaller. Pretty much all my “juice” came from outwith the journalism debate, as it did for most of those other journo bloggers. Much as I have enjoyed debating journalism with my peers more recently as the amount of journo blogging has grown, I’m horribly aware of how easily an online community can become an echo chamber… 2. This is a far more exciting situation than I painted it as in that e-mail. The fact that we have so many new tools for journalism emerging, that there are new publishing ecosystems and new roles for journalists to play is *exciting*. Journalism has had a great and enjoyable past, but then, I had a great and enjoyable childhood. The doesn’t mean I want to stay a child…