Won’t learn the Web? You’re fired.
“I personally don’t like working with people who get paid a lot and do very little,” he is quoted in the newsletter. “Promote your superstar editors and fire the rest.” Actually, I guess it’s not so much hilarious as sad. I think we all see this problem sometimes.
I like the culture change Howard Owens is quoted talking about on Poynter Online:
“Reporters and editors would take seriously their roles as community conversation leaders, concentrating on getting it right on the web first — Web-first publishing, blogs, video, participation — and using the print edition as a greatest hits, promote the web site vehicle. Old packaged-goods-thinking about the newsPAPER would disappear overnight.”
This is a huge change and I’m sure a lot of people out there don’t want to do the homework. Editors need to experiment to find out how things work. And I think it’s critical that they use at least Web basics in their own lives.
So to expand on Jeremy’s thought, here’s my list of things every editor should know how to do to avoid being fired:
- Use an RSS reader
- Blog
- Get stuff posted on your magazine’s Web site, whether you do it personally or not
- Take a picture with your camera phone
- Send a text message
- Set up Google Alerts
- Send a meeting request in Outlook
Have any to add?