New skills needed for mobile journalists

With more readers turning to the Internet, the demand for  mobile journalists is growing.

New jobs  are there for online writers, web editors, and multimedia assignment editors, said Erwin Oliva,  country editor for the Philippines of Yahoo! Southeast Asia.

“There are growth opportunities in online journalism but the skills required for an online journalist are  different from the skills requirements before,” Oliva told  journalism students in yesterday’s forum “Emerging Models for Selling Content Online” at the Cebu Normal University.

The forum was sponsored by Sun.Star Cebu, Smart Communications and CNU as part of the 17th Cebu Press Freedom Week celebration.

Oliva said the new breed of journalists   should be able to  write at length for print and more concisely  for websites,  edit photos fast and tell a story in  audio, video and graphic formats.

Journalism fundamentals, however,  remain.

An online journalist still needs to have good news judgment, writing style and  communication skills and should  be able to work under pressure.

The challenge for an online journalist is to use technology to widen their audience.

“The idea of media as gatekeepers of information is being challenged every day as social networks provide the audience real time reaction and information,” Oliva said.

He said future journalists need to develop the ability to put together multimedia stories by reinforcing “curated,” verified facts with photos, video and  audio.

“We have changing media habits because of the Internet. The trend in online journalism is that people don’t find news, instead news find them through social networks,” Oliva said.

“People now are publishers and at the same time consumers of news.”  /Marian Z. Codilla, Multi-Media Coordinator