Can journalist's converge themselves? (And why I'm not a broadcast student)

I decided to be advantageous today and try out mixing together a few clips from my Fujifilm camera (recommended on my journalism course) of myself playing my Yamaha keyboard.

Here is how it went:




As you can see, it wasn't a complete disaster, but still overly disappointing from my point of view. But it was my first time attempting to mix together some of my own clips and, bearing in mind that I was using music, I think it was quite ambitious.

It raises the point that is made time and time again throughout my journalism course that journalists should be multi-skilled now in a newsroom that is converging. Obviously, as primarily a print journalist, I would like to improve on my skills using my digital camera, and would be satisfied if I could do it as well as this guy.



Mario Ajero is not a broadcaster. He studies music at a university in Texas, but his video skills are something I aspire to.

In that respect, Mario is like the citizen journalist, and exemplifies why they are a threat to the professional journalist, which I am training to become. It shows that if anyone, no matter what profession they are already in, has a knack for using digital equipment, they can be competition to the professional journalist even only in their spare time.

The convergence of the newsroom means that now journalists have more to do and it is affecting how much they can get out and get stories while they are being told to record this, video that, write this, upload that.etc. Perhaps some of these citizens who have a knack of using equipment and would do it in their spare time could be channeled by newspaper editors into the direction of recording entertaining or exciting events for the newspaper. This could be a cheap option because the newspaper would not have to buy equipment and, perhaps, not buy the labour.

This would free up journalists who are not getting 'out there' enough. Or at least that's what I thought it should do. I have noticed during my work placement this week that barely anyone is in the newsroom because its journalists are 'out there' on their patches getting stories and sending them in by laptop.

The point still stands, though, that citizen journalism could be channeled to better, and cheap, use, especially during these dark days of economic downturn.