According to the Media Guardian, BBC director of nations and regions Pat Loughrey “has made a call to arms to his journalists, telling them to break more stories and be more courageous.”
He also said reporters needed to go out on the road to get stories, rather than spending too much time in the office on computers, relying on “air-conditioned journalism”.
“One of the sadnesses of the technological revolution in journalism is that one can get by with so-called reporting that is entirely based on the PC.
”It would be tragic if we let new technology facilitate a sterility of journalism where the number of stories diminishes because we haven’t the energy or the enterprise to go out and broaden the base.“
No kidding Pat. But here’s the thing. How can the BBC expect journalists to be writing more and more stories for more and more media each day, while simultaneously cutting back on resources and staff? Something’s got to give.
Technology isn’t the issue. For the most part, journalists are just turning to the tools that allow them to do their job as best they can with the time and resources available. The real issue is the resourcing behind journalists. Unless organisations are prepared to let journalists spend time outside the office, maybe not delivering stories for days or even weeks at a time, when are journalists actually going to have the time to break these all-important, investigative stories? If organisations aren’t prepared to pay the expenses necessary to research stories, how are reporters going to do their jobs properly?
Yes, certain skills and techniques are dying away, and that’s bad news for everyone. But the issue isn’t one of laziness in journalists: it’s of media organisations refusing to fund journalism properly. Loughrey’s remarks are simply a smokescreen for the BBC’s own failures in resourcing.