Image by B.K. Dewey via FlickrMark Luckie recently wrote about how the iPhone will revolutionize journalism. You may remember our coverage of Abilene Christian University’s iPhone initiative and the challenges it presents to student media.

Luckie argues that the rise of the smartphone is going to put more pressure on reporters and editors.

This means even shorter deadlines for reporters, and even quicker turnaround on blurbs that can be posted to the web immediately. It also means consumers will be more receptive to mobile video which, on the iPhone’s predecessors, had to be viewed on a screen the size of a postage stamp. The phone currently has built-in YouTube access for those videos hosted on the video sharing site, but it puts a greater demand on Apple to create Flash compatibility on the phone so news sites can provide video in a central location.

In the past, I’ve argued that student media outlets need to begin equipping reporters with laptops and wireless cards so they could file from location, even when there isn’t WiFi access. Now, it might be a better idea to give reporters a smartphone. However, annoyingly, the iPhone doesn’t have an accessory keyboard that makes typing easier.

And convincing college print journalists to think about publishing to the web first is still a challenge, since print readership remains strong on campus.

For more on the iPhone 3G, Mindy McAdams has been blogging here and here.

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Andy Dickinson and Pat Thornton thresh out the pluses and minuses of having “Digital Natives” in the management team at a news outlet.

Dickinson objects in part to Thornton’s original thesis:

But I don’t want a tribe of digital natives springing up creating digital divides – old/young, get it/don’t  – because rather than having the keys to the digital kingdom, all that the attitude really tells me is that they have gone really native. And when that comes with claims that having more of them is just what you need to get the job done…

One of the problems that Dickinson and Thornton are tussling over is the definition of “Digital Native.” (I can still hear my stats professor, Dr. Collins, saying “operationalize that”) I wouldn’t consider myself a digital native. I’m 40, grew up with the advent of cable and the compact disc, and came to the Internet with AOL and Netscape Navigator. Still, most of my work life has been spent with computer-based applications.  I watch television on the Internet exclusively, for pete’s sake.

And I’ve met more than enough 18-24 year olds who have little understanding of the social structure of the World Wide Web (much less how to use a computer beyond AIM and their browser). Putting such people in management positions simply because they’re young, and therefore assumed to be “digital natives” is not a solution. On the other end of things, some of the most digitally savvy people I know are older than I am.

That said, Pat makes some excellent points in his original post. Newspaper management should lean heavily on their younger staff members to provide entree into this demographic realm. Perhaps these staffers could provide a meaningful countermeasure to the tripe that is most “youth-oriented” publications. Of course, that’s if anyone will listen.

Anyway, interesting discussion. Read it and consider your own place on the digital continuum.

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Paul Bradshaw does a good job of explaining how journalism differs in a distributed world. Here’s a vodcast (video podcast) in which he explains what he’s talking about by “distributed journalism”:

UPDATE: I embedded the wrong video, now I can’t find a way to embed the right video. Here’s a link. Go listen to it NOW!

Now, the question is: Do you have someone on staff who is pushing your content out to social media sites? Is there a “Facebook editor” or a “YouTube” monitor, or a Digg editor? If not, why not?The key is not that this is going to garner a huge traffic boost for your college media site (it might), but that these types of tools will give your students greater “employability” in the future. What you learn in school doesn’t necessarily mean instant gratification, but can definitely help with a skill set that will be useful going forward.

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A lighthearted audio slideshow from Katie Anderson, who will be graduating from Eastern Illinois University in a few days. Anderson spent the semester doing an independent study focused on multimedia. She’s got a job as an education reporter at the Jacksonville Journal-Courier .

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