When I was born, in 1972 – a Pisces and the year of the rat (thanks Blogger) – my father listed his profession on my birth certificate as computer engineer.
The same year, (according to Wikipedia) Nixon went to China and ordered the space shuttle program to begin. The bloody Sunday massacre took place and the Godfather is released. The Watergate scandal takes place, leading Nixon to step down and the Munich Massacre takes place. Oh and the Vietnam war was still raging.
1972 it seems made the early 21st century's War on Terror seem a little lame, with a bomb
going off almost every week – and in Europe too. And I was raised in the cold war. I genuinely believed that the world could be annihilated at any second by the USSR – something most people today find completely unreal. When the Wind Blows was a potential reality form me.So what's this got to do with information businesses and journalism?
Well, even though computers at the time filled large rooms and mostly still used punch cards or very big hard disks, the global information age was being born.
The space shuttle development program led to a boom in communication satellites (either to spy on those tricky Ruskies or send radio or TV signals).
Vietnam, Watergate, Bloody Sunday and the Olympic massacre were stories carried around the world and almost as they happened.
These days, despite the massive amounts (quantity?) of computing power we throw at organising the world, there is still terrorism, still wars raging that America can't win and still some good quality journalism.
However, the advent of 24 hour rolling news has done two things.
The first is (perceptibly at least) that wars seem less real and, if anything, further away. In fact, the special effects in movies and the quality of computer graphics means there is very little difference on screen between the real wars and the fake.
Are we suffering from information overload? I don't know, but some times I think less news is better than more.
But as a journalist in the 21st century I can't think that for too long. Oh no. Like Woolworths, if we don't change we die. My former colleague Retail Week editor Tim Danaher writes in his blog that the nostalgia for Woolworths of the past is a dangerous thing. And so is the nostalgia for the good old days of journalism, which brings me to my second point.
Journalism needs to adapt to survive and journalists need to to change to. As my comrades in the Nation Union of Journalists are discovering, journalism and the media can no longer be defined by sector – newspapers, TV, magazines the internet (small i because you don't cap the T in telephone).
Instead, journalists can at any time be called upon to be writers, film makers, editors, bloggers, champions of SEO etc, because the perception is that their readers demand it.
And I truly believe that unless business to business journalists accept this they will all be out of a job. There, I've said it.
The news editor of a certain weekly retail magazine said to me years ago about podcasting: "If we start recording podcasts and putting them online, won't we be a radio station."
The answer is yes and a TV station and a web site and, sometimes, just a writer on a well-written, well-designed and well-subbed weekly business to business magazine.
Bring it on I say.
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