This year will be the last when the word “story” referred almost exclusively to a single stream of words written by a single author.
Read the full piece at poynter.org
Sonderman insight on @poynter: As of now, 'story' no longer refers to a lone author's rendition
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Definitely true and we’ve been on our way here for some time. This will be the year, but I fear that even if authors adjust to this new reality (somewhat questionable), many readers will have a much harder time accepting it (especially if they do not live their lives online), and of course, media organizations and corporations will for the most part (with a few exceptions) still not understand how to deal with the splintering of authorship. It’s an incredible development but I fear that some in the vanguard will find themselves bloodied in the process.
Completely agree!
That’s an innovative perspective, Mark. One rarely considers that it might be the readers who have a problem with it. Usually discussion focuses on the journalists. If that is the case, I’d expect it to be generational. The Gen X/Y/Zers invented mashups and rap, after all. Combining from sources to create something else is part of their genre.As for organizations, the development is potentially a core value for their future. The whole concept of organization is having a staff of people who specialize and multiply each other, compared to the lone wolf. The issue for media organizations is that we still train and utilize most of our people to work as lone wolves – one person per assignment, per story. Definitely need to get past that. It’s what I’m trying to do with this new class of fusion journalists.One thing, though, from my various multiplatform media projects: It absolutely plays havoc with all the usual implementations of byline.
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