As news organs struggle to grasp the ongoing digital structure change, so, too, discontent is growing amongst young journos who want to work in the online future.
After occasional recent criticisms that the National Union of Journalists is more concerned with being King Canute to the rising media tide than in equipping members to stay afloat, Jon Slattery reports the union’s magazine magazine branch has now tabled a motion to be presented to its upcoming annual delegate meeting at Southport in November…
The motion reads: “This ADM notes that:
1) Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and blogging are irrevocably changing the face of journalism.
2) That many of this new wave of journalists believe the NUJ’s attitude towards them is out of date.
This ADM instructs the NEC (national executive council) to address this problem by working with the blogging community and Twitteratti to bridge this gap and create a framework that embraces the NUJ’s journalistic principles while maintaining the press freedom enjoyed by bloggers and twitterers.”
The union has certainty taken a lot of time lately fighting regional and other journalism cutbacks made during a decline brought about by structural change and the advertising downturn (see its current list of causes). In some cases, it argues newspaper proprietors are still making profits healthy enough to obviate the need to redundancies.
But is the union really failing its members when it comes to online training, or is this just a renegade bunch of twitter addicts who think 140 characters is the future… ?