Pages

Monday, December 3, 2012

Potatoes and Journalism

I often compare journalism to potatoes.

As TCU 360 transitioned into true convergence and went digital-first, I randomly compared the prior news entities (print, online, broadcast) to whole potatoes.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

I said we would now become mashed potatoes because we would produce content together.
 
Image and video hosting by TinyPic

My most recent potato analogy shows the similarities between online and potato extras. Here’s how my thoughts in the shower weaved together:

If you’re hungry, you’re going to eat the potato. It’s cooked well. The cook took a long time preparing it just for you.

Even the best potato needs butter. It tastes better with sour cream. And, of course, bacon bits.
We all know you slaved away on that text story, but that doesn’t cut it anymore. The audience wants extras. They deserve extras because you can produce it.

Give them those embedded tweets. Let them scour through raw documents if they don’t believe you yet. Throw a photo slideshow at them and let them know that it’s not just pretty green leaves on the side of your plate any longer.

Get out of your potato box and into the kitchen of Wolfgang Puck. Impress the pants off of your viewers and fellow journalists.

Why not offer your audience all of the fixins? You’re their head chef.

No comments:

Post a Comment