We talk a lot in the circles I run in about a new skillset for reporters and about how a wired journalist in 2008 should be keeping up with the technologies and communities that are quickly looking like Michael Johnson in 1996, looking back at newspapers over their shoulder, smugly.
Yoni Greenbaum walks right into the glass office and says editors need a heaping bowl of New as well:
“If I was a publisher, corporate officer or even an employee, I would want an editor who is active online; who blogs and uses Facebook and MySpace; who has a digital camera and knows how use it and how to upload those images; who has a cell phone that use beyond just work emergencies; who knows how to identify Flash applet on a website; who knows that Ruby on Rails is not a MySpace band; who uses a newsreader; I could go on, but the point is the old skill set of paying their dues and being a wordsmith and possibly an amateur accountant just does not cut it anymore, honestly it hasn’t cut it for a long time.”
Plenty more where that came from.
If I were a reporter looking for work, I’d be looking for a gig somewhere where the editor has a GMail address for his or her personal e-mail. That’s a simple barometer, but the second I see a potential boss reach for the Hotmail bookmark in IE6 during an interview, I get a little queasy.