21st November 2009
Ashley Scrace
While a journalists’ best friend may be the pen, increasingly the computer is becoming a close accomplice.
What is being witnessed at the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) Annual Delegate Meeting (ADM), in Southport, is staggering. In this room – the grandiose Floral Hall, with its colourful lights and tainted-glass roof – there must be millions of pound worth of equipment.
Taking a quick gaze round the vast expanse of the hall there’s already a decent Christmas list for every technophile.
A long list of reporting technology
There is this computer itself: £400. Then there’s another ten laptops in front of me: say £4,000. Then there are cameras, tripods, video recording equipment, Dictaphones, microphones, iPhones, and a whole host of other gadgets and gizmos.
It’s like a rich man’s Antiques Roadshow here – ornate tables and men with handle-bar moustaches included…
But the reliance on technology is a double-edged sword. While live-blogging – via Twitter or any other method – and quickly written up reports may be a bonus, it all only functions properly when the technology does.
Unreliable
Computers crash; batteries run out; cables to transfer the data get lost and broken. Sometimes the ‘ghost in the machine’ (which is normally triggered by human stupidity) buggers everything up. In such scenarios the pen and paper become invaluable.
Shorthand is dying. It just is – as the reliance on technology to record information continues. But it will never be useless. My battery has run out four-times this weekend. I’ve now got him on a leash…
The pen has not even faltered. Admittedly it’s utterly useless for most web journalism. Yes you can record notes. But they need writing up. You need computers – and thankfully technology is available to make our jobs, if not easier, then slightly more fluid.
Arguments in favour of new technology
Yet technology is snubbed by some. There are a fair few hardened Hacks here armed with nothing but a pen, notepad and a stiff-upper lip. To them Twitter, Facebook, live-blogs and any other type of web-hosting is not ‘proper journalism’.
There are various arguments against this reluctance to embrace technology and I’m sure student reporters, armed with layer upon layer of unreliable (yet useful) technology, will testify here.
So should technology be put to bed for a while? Of course not. No one is suggesting it should be substituted for archaic methods. But it wouldn’t hurt to be substituted sometimes.
Especially in times of trouble, when batteries begin to run ou -
