Part of my "migration" over the last year has involved, well, a migration of profession. How to take a tech-savvy fine artist who freelances as a photographer, and steadily recreate her into a photojournalist?
Since my temporary move to Mississippi, I've been freelancing as both a photographer and (an occasional) writer for two local newspapers. I can check a few basic skills off of my list there, plus I'm accumulating tear sheets (in my past freelancing life I was a photographer for web content, and, although I have them on my site too, screen shots are not quite as thrilling to show off as a physical newspaper). For my regular day-job, I manage social media and web content for a retail business, which includes taking a few product photos as needed. Between the two my skills are somewhat varied.
Lucky for me, variety seems to be a plus. Lately, these seemingly separate things have been melding together in the global newsroom. Where the news was once flailing around trying to find a place in the digital world, things are now steadily clicking into place. Agency-driven media, or "content producers" (the little brother of wire services), are devoting part of their manpower to filtering the internet and analyzing the newsworthiness of trends and hashtags.
From the digital noise, they pick the highlights to report, or editorialize. Social media like Storify (of which I have become a recent addict), makes it even easier, allowing reporters to pull content from Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, and Facebook and organize them into a cohesive stream. From what I can tell, most content producers are using the service for displaying tweets, though it has a great multi-media appeal.
Personally, I'm in love with Storify. It's so much fun to create a story, and it's great for presenting an overview of what people are saying. It took me a while (and a little studying) for the lightbulb to go off, but using services like this to organize content is just the beginning. I strongly believe the new wave of journalism jobs will largely involve content management skills and crowd-sourcing. And I'm pretty excited to see where it all goes over this next year.
Find me on Storify: https://storify.com/megwolfe
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