Got a handle on today’s shifting media landscape? You’re already behind

One of the posts on this blog last week was about a post by NYU professor Jay Rosen on his own blog, How to be literate in what’s changing journalism.

In that post, Rosen, one of the leading media thinkers and critics in the U.S., spelled out what he expects his students to master in a class he teaches on “digital thinking.” He emphasizes that the concentration here is understanding the forces at work in the media, rather than mastering skills, an important but separate matter.

Since then, as is typical for Rosen, the conversation has continued in the comments of the piece, with Rosen proposing additions and amendments based on the comments of others. This kind of transparency and iterating in public is, itself, one of the concepts people who want to succeed in today’s media should understand.

Some of that feedback came from Steve Buttry, a journalist and journalism teacher I’ve cited often on the B/R Blog. Buttry addresses Rosen’s post point by point, adding his own thoughts on concepts such as “automation and ‘robot journalism,’ “data journalism,” “the shift to mobile” and more than a dozen others.

There are plenty of links on both posts, Rosen’s and Buttry’s, and I’d encourage you to take some time, click around and dig in. In the comments, Steve Woodward, who teaches journalism at Central Washington University, writes, “News is still stuck on the concept of mobile-first.” He means that even that concept is already dated.

My goodness! To paraphrase Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”: “Concepts come and go so quickly here!”

Click through to Rosen’s post to find out what new idea Woodward’s talking about.