Monday 18 January 2010

Playing the game: Jargon busting the hyper-local-web-first-multi-tasking-media-hub



After attending a couple of conferences on the future of journalism, I turned to the playingthegame blog by blunt - a somewhat cynical regional journalist -  for a little light relief and enjoyed its jargon-busting "bulls**t translator" which tries to make sense of the latest media buzz words.
Here's a sample:
Hyperlocal - Talking to people in the local area and getting stories from them. Just like we used to do when we had staff.
Web first - We really have no idea how to make money from the web but by banging up every story as soon as it is written eventually someone will write us a large cheque. Won't they?
Multi-tasking - Why can't you take pictures, do a video, write ten stories for both online and print editions, sub them, stick a headline on them, upload them and stick them on a page, get the teas on then deliver the paper on your way home? Lazy cunt.
Media Hub - How many people can we cram into a shoebox building and just how far away from patch do reporters have to be not be laughed at for calling themselves local?

The list also redefines some traditional jobs:
Sub-editors - Waste of money. Who needs to have a good looking paper that attracts the reader's eye when we can get the trainee reporters to slap it all up into a template?
Photographers -An unnecessary waste of money now that mobile phones take pictures. Who needs to see heads in pics anyway?

It also redefines Newspapers as: - An inconvenient but necessary vehicle that global hyper mega corporations use to bleed local towns dry by claiming they care when they really couldn't give a shit.

1 comment:

Rich Simcox said...

Saw this post earlier today via anther source. Lovely.