With Innovation Week well and truly underway, Ian Betteridge, Editorial Director of Alphr.com, Dennis Publishing’s big new tech launch, took to the floor to talk us through the three “ages” journalism has gone through for creating content:
- The age of print
- The early Internet era
- The Modern Age
With a career in journalism spanning over 20 years, he has seen the world of journalism and content publishing change first hand.
Starting out in the industry in 1995, publishing was a really simple business for journalists, operating under the mantra that “today’s news is tomorrow’s fish wrapper”.
Then came the internet, pushing the newspaper online. However, the process didn’t change and the job of the journalist remained very much the same. This carried on for what seemed like forever.
Enter 2015. The third age.
Journalists now operate over three stages – researching, creating and distributing. If a journalist is spending most of their time writing, they’re not doing their job properly, according to Betteridge. It’s no longer a case of finding something to write about and then writing about it. The game has changed.
Distribution is arguably the most important stage in modern journalism, and often the one paid least attention to. Content is no longer a static ‘fire and forget’ thing. Content now needs to be thought of as living and breathing. That is where true success lies.
