1.19.2009

journalism is the harbinger (or, say goodbye to sleep).

One of the attempted fixes the newsmedia has tried to bolster profits and smooth the transition online, is to basically to work journalists to death.  On top of the many, many facets of the actual job, the research, the interviews, the investigations and the writing, some journalists are expected to maintain a blog, create smaller pieces for websites, and generally add another separate job's workload to their day.


This is going to happen to all of us.

In a society where social media is well and truly mainstream, where transparency is a given, and where each individual within a company is seen as a potential representative, lots of people are going to find a social media element added to their duties.  Posting on a corporate blog, or updated a company focused next-generation equivalent of a twitter account, or flickr, or facebook page, is going to become a standard part of everyone's workday.  There will be a point where a lack of 'humanizing content' on behalf of a company or representative will seem as odd as meeting someone who refuses to use contractions.

The issue is, maintaining a meaningful social media presence is a lot of work.  Many of us are busy enough that we don't really know how to fit everything into a work day already.  I'm lucky enough to have a job where my use of social media on the job is accepted (and quickly becoming industry standard).

We should all get ready for the double shift.  It's coming.  And for the people who wouldn't be doing it anyways, it's going to be uncomfortable.

1 comment:

Firefly said...

I've often considered if blogging could actually make my job at camp easier. If we had a blog, perhaps with photos, updated every few days we might not get quite so many "how is my dear suzy or johnny" calls...they take up FAR too much of my waking hours.