Extra Credit: Mary Gardner Lecture

Cortni Moore

April 25, 2011

JRN 200

This lecture had a lot of key points that touched based on the topic, “Building The Future of Journalism: International Strategies For Technology Change And Innovation.” The main speaker, Martha L. Stone, CEO of World Newsmedia Network, talked about the future of Journalism being defined by two “seismic” changes.

The changes were the large influx of media and the demand and decision making choices of the audience. The large influx of media she described is basically the reason for enrollment rates at Journalism schools all around the world increasing. The decisions of the audience she talks about deals with this new age of Journalism where the audience can now choose what they want to read and what they want to listen to. It’s not being handed to them and forced upon them but they have the option to pick and choose who to trust and who to support.

She told about when she was a director of shaping the future for a newspaper project in Paris. Stone wanted to send messages of innovation and changes in media. She was apart of team called Newsplex who brainstormed how to innovate Journalism with media where they came up with ideas like using cell phones for sources of information that we use today.  By her telling us about things she, not so long ago, brainstormed about to become more innovative in this field and to see these things being of everyday usage now shows how fast technology and times evolve. It tells me that we as a people are constantly changing and looking to become more innovative and will need newer ideas every few years to keep up with this explosion of media usage.

A big part of what they did was providing research and they did this in two ways. The first was called 10.1 World News Future & Change Study which was a survey of over 100 countries in 10 different languages. The second was a collaborative study in 2010 of 100 reports, incorporating 400 data sets. This report was useful because it told people where the revenue trends were going as well as what we should be teaching, learning and what would be the next best upcoming place to go for a job.

            She had many graphs and charts to show which displayed the distribution of different forms of media usage all over the world.  To me this really made it known that as a journalist you must know your audience, their interests and their means of receiving the information you are trying to distribute.  

She made it clear that in this field you should remain relevant, passionate and also have a deep understanding of your audience.

I can see from this lecture and everyday experiences that media, it’s usage and learning to incorporate it in your work for the audience is a major thing to know and use in today’s society. Based on the trends and what the newer generations want and respond to, technology is something you must become knowledgeable in, if you want to succeed in this career field.