Just tell the story

Technology won't save newspapers, but telling a good story might.

Gary Goldhammer in his Below the Fold blog says newspapers have been revamped and "Tivoed" to appeal to our "cultural Attention Deficit Disorder" so that we get snippets instead of nuggets.

Just using the technology doesn’t make you relevant or hip ...

I agree with Goldhammer that tools don't create the substance. But learning to tell the story in video or audio or flash or whatever is next does make good journalism. A medium that allows video and interactive story telling demands its use. Our early efforts KnoxNews.com at news Web video and audio often find the multimedia piece -- especially video -- will get greater traffic than the same's reporter's text piece.

The trick, as Goldhammer notes, is that the technology be used to tell the story. For newspaper journalists, we're still learning to do that one in the digital world as well as it can be done with print. It's about doing journalism.

Tags: newspapers | online media | social media