Zadi Diaz of JetSet doesn’t want to be a journalist. She doesn’t want to be called a journalist. Neither does Amanda Congdon, who says she never called herself a journalist but a video blogger and actress and producer. They each said that last night at the opening panel for the Radio Television News Directors Association. We journalists keep thinking that everybody wants to be a journalist and that it is our precious title to mete out. But these talented, creative, popular women want none of it. Terry Heaton said he considered them journalists anyway and so do I. But note again that they don’t want our label. Which says something about the label and what we’ve done to it, eh? We’ve made it exclusive. We’ve weighed it down with pretense and presumptions and rules. We’ve made these women assume that being a journalists stops you from doing what they do. Beware.
The panel was filled with some of my very favorite people in this world: Terry Heaton, a leader in getting TV into the next generation; Michael Rosenblum, who among many things has started the VJ movement; Elizabeth Osder, a friend with whom I worked lo 12 years ago and who became a leader in this world (she just left Yahoo to get her hands dirty again); the amazing Zadi; and Amanda Congdon, who needs no intro. They were here to blow the minds of the TV establishment and I think they did; I saw shaking heads and tsk-tsks next to me. These guys are behind newspapers in getting to the climax of the scary movie that is their industry. I was going to live-blog, but the damned Vegas Hilton has no wi-fi or electric plugs. So I shot some snippets (badly) which I’ll upload (but the network in the room is slow as hell . . . so more later). Here’s one with Michael Rosenblum answering the question: what should TV stations do?
(If you don’t see the video, wait a few minutes. It’s going through the YouTube machine. Meant to use Blip.)
Miles O’Brien of CNN, the moderator, had video chats with his charming 13- and 14-year-old daughter and son back at home, asking them how they get the news. They agreed that TV nows just covers murders and stuff and that it’s scary. At the end, Rosenblum said: “You just did a live remote and what did it cost you?… That’s the future, babe.” A few other notes:
Terry showed WKRN’s site and how they have 23 blogs that each have their own brands. That is viral architecture. He later scolded the crowd for teasing their audiences; nobody wants to be teased. Later, he really scolded a journalism student who came up to the microphone with the usual MSM cant. He said he’s sick of people coming into the business worrying about where there next job is going to be. Stations are going to see, as they get more local, that they need to work with local people who are rooted in the community, not dying to move on.
Elizabeth then lectured the students and told them to make sure their schools teach them entrepreneurship. Amen. (I’m teaching a course in entrepreneurial journalism at CUNY in the fall. More on that later.)
Zadi said, “I live online. There’s never an offline.” She said that people on TV “seem to be so animated and fake.” We just want to connect with real people, she argued.
Terry
