Multimedia: I'm afraid it's time

I know that I've been beating the multimedia drum all summer and I suspect some of my colleagues across the state are nodding their heads and saying something like, "Looks like Rich has gone over to THAT side." Yeah, I have, but not necessarily because I want to.

We've had prophets in the organization telling us for some time that convergence and multimedia is the new thing and that we need to get on board. And while I clearly am closer to an earlier adopter than a middle-of-the-roader, I am somewhat of a dinosaur, too. I'm an old dog who has to be persuaded that learning new tricks is worth the effort.

And I just think the time has come for us to learn about multimedia and incorporate it in our exisiting courses --and when necessary to create new courses. I feel this way because I keep reading more and more about the industry moving this way. Journalism instructors who never learned this stuff in school have to learn it now so that they can add it to their repertoire of what students need to learn from us.

If we don't do it now, we risk becoming irrelevant. And, yes, I understand that we STILL have the primary responsibility of teaching students to gather news from a variety of sources, synthesize that information and prepare it for dissemination. And we must teach objectivity, fairness, completeness and responsibility along with the technology of the day.

Editor and Publisher published another story along those lines today that is worth reading.

As demand for online content grows, acquiring online media skills have become more than a personal hobby for me -- this stuff is coming in handy at work. Reporters who can produce an edited MP3 clip or a video clip can become a valuable asset to any newsroom. Here are seven tips to get started.

I struggle to understand the hows and whys of multimedia intruding into what we do, but it just is time we learned.