EXTRA! EXTRA!

I think that all sectors of the news media industry are coming to this same conclusion at different times...It's Not Enough to Just Write.

News is multimedia, film, photo, sound AND the written word and to thrive you've got to do it all.

Right now we have a bunch of journalism neophytes tripping over their own skills trying to put stuff out there on the web that looks like news. What we're missing are the principles of reliable information transmission. Tommy J. aged 21 in Sarasota, FL may have taken a few film classes and taught himself how to use iMovie or Final Cut Pro but that doesn't make him a journalist, or does it?

We've stumbled into an era in which anyone with a camera and a computer can make the news. It used to be that something would happen, local tv stations would dispatch a reporter and cameraman out to the site, they'd interview some yokel that witnessed the event and the viewers wait for the report from the newsroom to verify the facts.

The yokels have eliminated the middle man. We can get our news directly from the source. What that lacks is fact checking, complete coverage and integrity. That's not to say that all iReporters out there are trying to deceive the viewers, but that with so many means of transmission it's hard to tell which sources to believe.

At the same time traditional journalists have been clinging to the principles they learned in J-school without considering the real effect of the digital revolution. For most newspapers, I think it's too late. They didn't change gradually with their readers and now they want public pity for the fate that has befallen them. Give me a break.

However, as most should or will realize, without newspapers we lose the institutions that have upheld (and funded) journalistic integrity. With them go the online journalists that still find their funding on the outside. What's the solution?

As with all equilibriums, the two halves will have to meet somewhere in the middle. Where the two cross, I'm still not quite sure. But I'm certain that the news media revolution has just begun. The rise of the new media brings the fall of the old and in the years to come we will see it rebuild itself - who will be the leaders? who will teach the followers? We shall see. Now IS the time to seize the day!