Why should storytelling stop evolving now?

Consider how storytelling has evolved through the centuries in art and literature: oral storytellers, epic poems, myths, legends, parables, fables, fairy tales, tall tales, campfire stories, ballads, sonnets, tragedies, comedies, mysteries, biographies, novels, short stories, free verse, comic books, operas, soap operas, animated cartoons, situation comedies, TV commercials, and on and on.

Storytelling in journalism has evolved, too: inverted pyramid, news briefs, columns, reviews, charticles, timelines, series, Q&A’s, narrative journalism, and on and on.

In a recent blog post, Jeff Jarvis committed journalistic heresy, questioning the use and future of the article, the most common product of newspaper journalism. “An article can be a luxury,” he wrote.

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How the crowd can save your career

The crowd can save your journalism career.

I encourage any journalist to read Journal Register Co. CEO John Paton’s message to last week’s WAN/IFRA International Newsroom Summit: How The Crowd Saved Our Company. (I also encourage media executives to read John’s message, but I’m writing here about individual journalists seeking career success in a time of great upheaval.)

I want to suggest how individual journalists can learn from the JRC experience that John shared. I won’t belabor what John said about how the newspaper model is broken and can’t be fixed. I’ve said that plenty of times myself, and if you’re still in denial about that, you’re not ready for the rest of his message or mine. John concluded that discussion with this important point:

You don’t transform from broken.

You don’t tinker or tweak.

You start again anew and build from the ground up.

John was providing advice for his fellow executives for building their organizations from the ground up. I’ll focus on advice for the journalist hoping to make yourself a valuable asset for such a starting-anew organization.

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The Buttry version of social media best practices for editors

Yesterday I criticized ASNE’s report on best practices in social media. Today I’m going to take a positive approach, suggesting alternatives. Here are my 10 best practices for social media (written for newsroom leaders; the list would vary for other journalists):

1. Smart and frequent conversations among newsroom leaders and their staff members are the best way to guide effective, ethical use of social media.

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