Good News for Journalists

admin — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:10:43 +0000

As a follow up to my recent post about why corporate employers should hire a journalist, I’m encouraged to read in the news today that at least one company is seizing the opportunity to hire seasoned journalists from the print industry that we all know is in financial decay now. The article in OnlineMedia Daily by Mark Walsh says AOL is picking up ‘old media’ talent – reporters and columnists from the New York Times, Chicago Sun Times, L-A Times and others – to AOL’s online news properties like AOL News and AOL Money & Finance. Old media…new media…it is all the same at the heart of the matter for journalists – credible content! So kudos to AOL for having the insight to see the value. I am sure these additions to their staff will add depth and continue the move, already underway, to produce even better online content in news, corporate and other information being consumed at a break-neck pace each day! And we know those journalists will continue to do the jobs all of us count on them to do – their stories will just go to a different printing press! And in that vein comes the announcement of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund today, which is billed as a way to keep that all important investigative journalism role alive.

Credibility

admin — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:23:42 +0000

Now here’s a word that gets bantied about lately. Credibility. It appears as if credibility is being questioned at every turn and we’re all trying to figure out how that happened all at once. We are questioning credibility in our government, large corporations and the people who run them, our economy, the stock market and some are even going to jail for abusing the appearance of credibility to the point of fraud. If you listen to Bernard Madoff’s victims, they were trusting individuals, all 4800 or so of them. From construction workers to highly educated people, you can watch their stories on CNN, read the letters they wrote to the judge, or listen to one victim’s story, the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, Lawrence R. Velvel on Lawyer2Lawyer this week. They all thought Madoff was credible. We all have a certain expectation of credibility with colleagues and business men and women in general. As a former TV journalist, I hold credibility as one of the most important attributes to protect. In the definition of credibility, two words are mentioned: trustworthiness and expertise. And this leads me to sharing a blog post written by Jill Geisler, who heads The Poynter Institute’s Leadership and Management Group, called Ten Reasons You Should Hire a Journalist. I couldn’t write it as well as Jill does and I feel a responsiblity to pass the word on so that some of my former colleagues and even journalists I don’t know, who have shared the responsbility of telling their community’s stories get a fair shake in the job market as many are being displaced. So give it a read and you’ll see what I mean. Journalists (most of them) have held high standards when it comes to crediblity and that’s worth a lot in these uncertain times. Even they may not know how valuable that is in the job market and in society in general.

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Good News for Journalists

Credibility