TAKEAWAY::Changes at CNN signal how the new definition of news applies to TV networks, not just printed newspapers.
We often say that printed newspapers have lost the time advantage for breaking news.
That is a fact in this media quartet world where, for example, a person escaping an airliner that just crash landed , can tweet about his experience moments after evacuating the smoky aircraft—-and include an image, too!
But it is not just printed papers that feel disadvantaged in a world of news that never stops, and of citizens who are fully equipped to turn into reporters, photographers and videographers at the sound of a siren.
Television, too, feels the impact of citizen journalism.
Who’d say?
Now, the new CNN boss, Jeff Zucker
announces his plan to take the news network in different directions, and, in his own words:
“We’re all regurgitating the same information. I want people to say, ‘You know what? That was interesting. I hadn’t thought of that. The goal for the next six months, is that we need more shows and less newscasts.”
Then , it is as if Zucker was a contemporary newspaper publisher, citing that a news channel cannot rely in news alone and insisting that more films and documentary-style stories will fill the air. In addition, Zucker’s new hires are more digital than television.
While CNN and other TV networks may not be raising the “digital first” flag, it is obvious that they are feeling pressures similar to those newspapers have for years now.
Storytelling is the winner in the process , as it is for newspapers whose editors survived the trauma of seeing news—-in the old definition—-minimized, and who have moved on to accept that they still can surprise and tell great stories.
We are beginning to see that multimedia storytelling is gaining momentum and acceptance not just for newspapers and magazines, but television as well, prompting me to feel excited about the prospects, while remembering that the next generation of journalists will move seamlessly with their stories from platform to platform.
While one of the Ns in Cable News Network may be gaining a new definition, it is one we should embrace with gusto: news as content that surprises.
For more:
http://capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2013/12/8536789/zucker-plans-massive-change-cnn
