New category, Article of the Day: skills for journalists

I use Fleck, Google Reader, Twitter, and Delicious. So that basically means I’m sharing loads of articles everyday. Yet I have the feeling, no, I’m sure, that most of these links get lost in the overwhelming amount of social bookmarks and Twitter updates. And yes, that fine. Except when it comes to those posts that have a little something extra. Posts every blogger or web-savvy should read. From now on I’ll highlight these posts on a daily basis. Here we go, no. 1, tipped by Edial Dekker.

Ten Basic New Media Skills Journalists Need To Know

Tom Foremski, a former IT journalist and and Silicon Valley columnist for the Financial Times, blogs on the Silicon Valley Watcher about the business and culture of the Valley. Besides the post I’m highlighting here, his about page is also worth your attention.

Foremski sums up ten basic skills for journalists, because ‘most traditional journalists can barely type (..) but they know how to create compelling media and are able to do it consistently’. The striking thing about this list is that the skills are really basic for experienced bloggers. Yet we – the bloggers – tend to forget that. So next time we complain about the lack of journalists in the blogosphere, we might think about improving accessibility. What about a New Media Skills Volunteer Group?

• Read the article on www.siliconvalleywatcher.com

Update: Tim Overdiek, correspondent in London for the NOS Dutch public broadcasting posted two interesting updates on Twitter in reply to this post:

overdiek @dutchproblogger Don’t fully agree w/him. I prefer a journalist who can’t type but can tell a good story. Let others help the poor bastard. (about 18 hours ago)

overdiek @dutchproblogger But of course I love the top ten. (Although confession: Can’t do them all.) (about 18 hours ago)

Overdiek is a blog evangelist and even convinced some famous Dutch news anchors to start blogging. I admire his work yet I don’t agree with him on this. Shouldn’t we redefine the definition of a journalist? Just like a chiropractor has to learn new techniques, journalists should as well.

Times are changing, people have less attention and ask for a different kind of reporting (with deeplinking and all), so journalists have to adapt to these new needs. What do you think?

Some other posts you might be interested in:

• Article of the Day: The world of blogging according to TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld
• What Journalists Can Learn From Rock Stars
• Bloggers should ‘drag’ journalists into the eye of the storm