David Schlesinger on journalism in the age of Twitter

In the future, old media won’t control news dissemination. Newspapers, magazines and news services won’t die. But they must change.

The only way for news organisations like Reuters to survive is to embrace the change and embrace the new. “Longing for the ways of the past will not work.”

Schlesinger was speaking to the International Olympics Committee Press Commission on Tuesday. His speech was posted on the Reuters Editors’ blog (click on the link below to read the full text).

“I spend my days at Reuters preaching the multimedia gospel to my 2,700 journalists,” he said.

“I want people to think holistically. I need them to. More and more, we’re issuing a multimedia report to multimedia-savvy consumers who no longer make a distinction between information they receive from text and information they receive from images. They demand words and pictures to be blended because… well, because that’s the way the world is! That’s the way the internet is. That’s the way schools work. That’s the way businesses work.

“So that’s my gospel - to bring multimedia to life at Reuters.”

In the face of “citizen journalism” using new social media tools, “what can we do to survive, or more fundamentally, to stay relevant?

“I think the only path is to embrace the change and embrace the new. Longing for the ways of the past will not work,” Schlesinger said.

“We in the traditional media and you in the IOC must concentrate our efforts on defining and developing that which really adds value.

“That means understanding what really can be exclusive and what really is insightful. It means truly exploiting real expertise.”

It means using all the multimedia tools available and all the smart multimedia journalists to provide a package so much stronger than any one individual strand, Schlesinger said.

It means working with the mobile phone and digital camera and social media-enabled public and not against them.

While old distinctions and old definitions are falling, “Our goal has to be to preserve the institutions and not the rules or definitions.

“And the way to do that is to evolve and morph and develop faster than the changes all around us.” ■