The digitally inclined journalist

BitDepth#1271

AT THE TT Publishers and Broadcasters webinar on technology journalism in August, the most enthusiastic participants were journalism students from the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts of TT (COSTAATT).

That's probably a good thing, because the journalism of the future will increasingly be enabled by new practitioners who are digitally savvy.

The two webinar sessions were led by David Ho, a former Wall Street Journal editor. Ho pointed out that digital transmission of news began 160 years ago with the invention of Morse code, which transposed language into a codified form.

"Digital transition is hard and often painful," Ho said. "The hardest thing is people.

"Ultimately, technology problems can be solved, but you have to win over people, sometimes teaching them and training them one at a time.

"Tech is going to be changing all the time," he warned participants. "You will have to learn something new continually."

He encouraged webinar attendees to "learn the language of technology and understand the hot topics.

"Be a watchdog, not just a cheerleader. Be clear. Keep an eye on why it matters."

It wasn't clear how many webinar participants left fired up by his advice and guidance on how to become a technology journalist.

What I am sure of is the surprising reluctance of local media houses generally to engage technology seriously as a topic for newsgathering. Even today, in the grip of a pandemic that has thrown the importance of virtual connections into sharp relief, technology is still covered as something of a nerdy curiosity when it isn't lumped in with business, appearing in those pages with almost all the technology aspects stripped out.

It was a curious event for me, coming as it did on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the first publication of this column.

So what have I learned in the last quarter-century?

Technology journalism is way more than being awed by new personal devices. As ICT reaches deeper into the fabric of everyday life, it's about everything. It's about connectivity, government policy, project execution, education, systems and open access, to mention but a few aspects of technology that I've found myself reporting on.

TT probably doesn't need many tech journalists, but it needs a lot more technology-capable and engaged practitioners willing to respond to the pervasiveness of the sector with, at the very least, basic comprehension and a capacity for analysis.

The only reliable way I've found to do that is through immersion, not just reading, but experiencing technology's aspects in everyday life. To do that, you have to approach the work with a particularly restless and inquiring spirit that isn't limited to the assignment of the day or even your beat. There absolutely need to be more reporters working in the space.

A continuing misunderstanding in the local technology sector is that everyone is either technically inclined or some kind of influencer, because the practice of journalism is so thin on the ground in the technology sector.

The problem is hardly unique to technology. The oil and gas sector has been starved for capable reporting, with only a few bright spots, like the stellar work of David Renwick, and huge swaths of business reportage is simply stenography.

Journalism tends to be focused on the lowest common-denominator information, the news that affects or interests everyone, but the next challenge will be to inhabit difficult subjects and explain why they are important. That's going to demand a new generation of journalists with a capacity for specialisation if the business is to remain relevant.

Mark Lyndersay is the editor of technewstt.com. An expanded version of this column can be found there