The new site. It tries to fuse the institution formerly known as the Medill School of Journalism with Integrated Marketinging Communications. It’s pretty. (Although the picture of someone reading the newspaper is a bit out of place.)
But as much as Medill 2020 is being promoted to students, the key message on the site and Lavine’s infamous graphic is still awkward: “Relevant, differentiated storytelling & messages that engage the audience.”
Medill 2020 is a very long document, but it’s also very unfocused. It’s a scattershot attempt to bring together all the ways technology is changing journalism: the new ways people get news (RSS, mobile), the new sources of content (blogs, YouTube), audience research, the interaction the Internet brings (comments, TrackBack), and the new forms for stories (audio slideshows, podcasts). I feel like the big picture is lost by thinking about all the pieces.
I do think Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis, and others are right that the fundamental shift in journalism is that it’s a conversation now, not a one-way street. Things like RSS and podcasts are cool, but they’re not the core of journalism – there will always be new ways of collecting data and new ways of telling stories. What’s important is learning how to stimulate and manage a conversation, not just to tell a story, but how to tell many.