Letter to a young writer

Please imagine that we are having this conversation a few years from now, when you are no longer a student, but out in what we call the "real world."

The reason I ask you to imagine this is because you truly have a unique historical opportunity. The emergence of new media forms is happening right here, right now, today, tomorrow, and the next day.

Blogging, for example, did not emerge centuries ago in some faraway place – there are no Dead Sea Scrolls to be discovered from the early days of blogging.

It’s all brand new, so much so that we do not yet have an agreed-upon set of standards to teach you. That’s something you students and we teachers have in common – we’re both discovering the world of new media on the fly.

The explosion of blogs, websites, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc., means that any person who wishes to can now become a publisher.

Think about that for a second. When you were born, the only publishers of any note were the formal established companies producing newspapers, magazines and books.

The broadcast media consisted mainly of commercial radio stations, and the three major television news networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC), though a slew of very young cable TV networks were already aggressively biting at their heels.

That was then.

Today, everything has changed, and your generation is now at the epicenter of these changes.

For a sense of how volatile the media environment is, just tune into CNN on any random primary night this election season. Led by Wolf Blitzer, this team jumps around from one panel of political pundits to another, all the while proclaiming that they are the "best political team on television," as if anybody was keeping score.

Each of CNN's panels of three sit at desks with -- not one -- but two laptops in front of them (a Mac and a PC). CNN reporters routinely check in with the so-called “blogosphere,” and make references to comments or questions coming in via text messaging from Blackberries, iPhones, and other PDAs.

CNN also features a large touch-tone screen that allows their main political correspondent, John King, to zoom in on the various precincts in states in the hope of illuminating the demographic patterns that identify supporters of the various candidates.

None of these gimmicks were in use a few years ago and some of them will, no doubt, be abandoned in the years to come. Meanwhile, your generation will graduate and move out into this dynamic media environment with a major advantage over the people who currently work as journalists.

Why is that? Think about it. Most of these guys came to journalism decades ago, before any of the current tool sets even existed.

They have had to re-school themselves, learn how to use new devices, and pick up new technical skills, but most of them remain lost in the '50s or '60s or 70's or (pick your decade).

By contrast, how many of you send text messages to your friends via your cellphones?

Texting is the new shorthand, and it can function as such when you are interviewing sources. This is an advantage for young people.

Interactivity is the common feature of all new communication tools and avenues. Email was the first, biggest, and still most important of these tools. In barely more than a decade it has become ubiquitous.

Imagine a reporter’s life before email? People used telephones much more.

Imagine her life before cellphones? People had to work much harder to reach one another.

Imagine what it was like before GPS, MapQuest, and other navigational aides. People got lost more often and had more trouble locating the places they needed to go.

In this flat new media world, everyone is a publisher and everyone is a consumer. Everything we say is up for grabs. If you can establish your own voice and take advantage of Web 2.0 tools to distribute your work in the social networking sites, you may be able to build your own entrepreneurial media business from scratch.

Just remember this: Journalism has never been about the bells or the whistles. Those things come and go, and always are changing.

It’s not about computers or cellphones; it’s about the networks of people you can build.

It always takes time for the established institutions of society (like mainstream journalism) to adapt to new technologies and to periods of rapid social change.

In this age of yours, one opportunity above all beckons – globalization. Think about your ability to connect not only with friends on campus but with others all over this planet!

This is an awesome new power, never before so broadly available. Human ecology is changing as a result; here too you can have an advantage by recognizing this early, and by thinking hard about how you can contribute through your work to solving global problems.

Good luck.

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