The problem with journalism & new media

J-schools are about teaching students how to be storytellers, says Tom Fiedler, the dean of the College of Communication at Boston University. “It’s the soup and not the bowl that provides the nourishment we need. We want to teach our students to make a great soup. What they serve it in matters little.” (nytimes)

This is why newspapers are in trouble. The storytelling matters, but if journalists don’t know how to make it work with digital media, the greatest storytelling will fall flat.

Journalism was never just about storytelling. That’s what novelists and creative nonfiction writers do. Journalism is about sharing the story, breaking it down into something digestible, and disseminating it to the masses in the most efficient, effective way possible. Right now, it’s multimedia, and if journalists don’t learn to use the tools and make it work, all that great storytelling is wasted.

The story is the soup. Journalists need to be the spoon.