Always do what you’ve always done …

My mom liked to say to me: “If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.”

Wednesday marked my fourth week working for the EJC here in Maastricht, and I can say what I’m getting here is in no way what I’ve always gotten.

I’m really getting tuned into what’s happening in the world of “Web 2.0,” innovations in journalism, new media, etc cetera. And I’m really, really surprised how accessible and easy-to-use everything is in this Web 2.0 world.

Back in the United States, some of my friends – a majority of them work in journalism – don’t know what an RSS feed is. And I’m not talking about the aging editor tucked inside his glass office… I’m talking about talented, 20something, well-trained journalists who can crank out stellar ledes and nutgraphs like nobody’s business.

I was pretty satisfied with life there – I graduated from a good university and had a good entry-level reporting job with smart co-workers and a great editor at a McClatchy newspaper – but just wasn’t sure I wanted to resign myself to a blind climb up the daily journalism ladder.

Plus, witnessing firsthand the uncertainty now facing traditional newsrooms … I figured it was time to take a risk. Because I don’t know if, in the future, the ability to crank out compelling copy is going to be enough. Sure – it will always be necessary, but I don’t think it will be enough.

So far the rewards of my move are outweighing the risks.

I’ve learned how to use del.icio.us to update the EJC site. I’ve watched our talented tech guys use free sites like Flickr and Slideshare to create informative multi-media packages for our website. I figured out how to route calls from SkypeIn, where I have an American number, to my Dutch mobile phone. Bernd is currently teaching me how to use Yahoo Pipes to create personalized RSS feeds we’re going to try and integrate into the Media Landscapes page.

Since my journalism education has been pretty traditional up to now, I arrived here a bit skeptical about “Web 2.0.” But after sitting through our Innovation Journalism conference, I’m really excited and optimistic about the possibilities.

Plus, as the sole native English speaker here, I’m honing my vocabulary and grammar skills while editing the copy of my peers. It’s a good challenge for me to try and offer a satisfactory (and correct) answer when they ask questions about the language.

Along those lines, constantly hanging out with non-native speakers has forced me to try and eliminate colloquialisms from my speech – and writing – so as to communicate effectively. I think that’s a good thing.

Anyway, a month into this new experience, I’m glad I listened to my mother – which, now that I think about it, was an act that itself may have been the first step down the path of doing things I’d never done before!

K. Clore

Posted on August 9, 2007 by .
Filed under personal.