iPad Journalism

The recent unveiling of the iPad by Apple has generated a lot of buzz - especially among journalists. Journalists are trying to find a way to make the iPad benefit the industry. Magazine editors like the iPad because it caters to their needs of designing. Several people agree that the iPad can change journalism because of its "immersive potential, its platform for rich multimedia, its ability to deliver information based on where it is in the world."

According to graphic designer Joe Zeff, newspaper editors should approach the iPad because of its graphic elements and how people will interact with it.

Poynter Online Managing Editor Steve Myers says that people don't want to read long stories even if the graphics are "stunning."

I would agree with Myers. It sounds like the iPad offers another platform of media. Most people who would be interested in getting apps probably have subscriptions to newspapers. Therefore, newspaper companies would just be giving readers another way to access information.

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Your Morning News...Fresh or Stale?

Today our news comes from a vast number of directions and alarmingly fast. Journalists and newspapers are constantly challenged with selling what is elsewhere available for free. How we receive our information and news is widely available to everyone and journalists, once again, are struggling to sell the news--at least to people under the age of fifty-five. Editors and news directors feel the angst of the growing and continued population of the Internet. They now see the huge threat the Web represents to the way they distribute their product.

The days of getting your news and information from the newspaper are long gone. More often than not, by the time a story has been printed on the front page of your paper, it has been blasted online for many hours. It is often old news at that point. Many papers and journalists, while slow to this conclusion, have learned that they not only need to report the news but to offer other layers. These layers are often opinions, analysis, points of view, and interpretation. Is it finally time to sell something more than just the news?

In the days when the latest news was available to anyone who chatted in the street or at church or the supermarket provided mostly opinion--the something extra above just the news. The growth of cities and the development of weekly papers encouraged the development of the sale of news and mass production. This has lasted more than a hundred years.

If journalism is to move past just selling widely available, cheap, staler-than your morning coffee news--they must choose to impart of a ear piercing word--wisdom. Mainstream journalists are making a big mistake if they continue to believe that their ability to collect and organize information will continue to make them indispensable.

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