How to shape a career in top journalism and innovative storytelling heading to 2030.
BBC domestic and its World Service, ABC News, and Channel 4 News, to mention a few form my work identities of the past.
Today I was asked to share my career and thoughts with an international group in Europe looking to the next generation of journalists. It’s a request I often get and am happy to oblige (time etc allowing). Experience, tested scholarly knowledge and double consciousness gives me a bearing to reflect.
Earlier this month I spoke to a highly inquisitive group of media students from New York University (courtesy of Prof Jonathan Wilson).
Journalism’s enduring philosophy; its inkwell from where it drew, and continue to draws its ideas is in flux. Global citizenship is amplifying the voices of young global south talent. News executives continue to express a general antipathy to diversity unable to recognise its commercial leverage, and demands from young people. AIs impact in journalism is a boon and bust. Generally treated with fear ( and this should concern) there is problem-solving on tap as demonstrated by Captain Kirk of Star Trek some sixty years ago. These were just some the areas I covered.
I showed the group a film I’d made using AI which drew deep interests — a few woos! It’s the real-life story of my father, a pioneer coming to the UK in the 1950s from Gold Coast ( later renamed to Ghana).
Four years ago when I presented AI to my students many were visibly upset. It’s coming and we have work to prepare next gen. journalists what’s in store, and how we might integrate it into our workflow. I recently had a call from a member of Channel 4’s Board of Directors to present to their members.
This week, I was a judge on the UK’s highest awards in television journalism, the RTS Awards. It’s the standard all, particularly next gen should aspire to. However it’s worth asking whether in fifteen years time television journalism will look and feel anything like it does today. I do wonder just how much will the International journalist of tomorrow evolve beyond being proficient in the use OSINT (Open Source Intelligence)?
Trend extrapolating and superforecasting that I also teach offers insight into a new type of journalist. Hot off the press comes this publication I founded and edited which repurposes some journalists as Applied Storytellers. You’ll also find details of a new news platform about to be launched here www.viewmagazine.tv
At my Uni in Cardiff I share knowledge (I prefer this than the usual term lecturing) about how to become a foreign correspondent or otherwise an international correspondent , which is a label I prefer.
This is journalism’s equivalent of Special Forces — elite reporters who are tasked with interpreting world events, often working under extreme conditions.
Some of the names in the industry who’ve been kind enough to share their thoughts with my class include Sky’s multiple winner Alex Crawford; the BBC’s Jememy Bowen, also a multiple award winning correspondent; and ITV’s Noel Phillips who is the youngest correspondent in the UK who’s picking up awards.
“You really need to want it” says Sky’s journalist Alex Crawford.
In 1992 to 1994 I really wanted it. I flew out to South Africa to live and fulfil an objective to become a foreign correspondent, a freelancer. It was a lengthy and ambitious plan wanting to become a journalist in the first place. I studied maths and chemistry at De Montford University and could not write for toffee, but I was an avid book reader seduced by the idea of having my voice heard and being seen.
That there were hardly any people of colour at the time in the UK doing this was not a deterrent my end, but an opportunity and one that made me impatient. I grew up in Ghana, emboldened by a culture and school where you were told impossible is nothing. I spent my time immersed in watching films like the world would end the following day e.g. Sholay (1975), Stage Coach (1939), Pick Pocket (1959). I went to bed listening to the BBC World Service which opened up the magic of sound and imagining.
In the UK at De Montfort, I got involved with local radio and ethnic programmes. Here, looking to various outputs, what really drove my desire for broadcasting was a perspective where I could see both sides of a discussion and synthesise my own response. I would learn later the difference between opinion and informed report. Once earlier in my career a senior editor at BBC 5 where I freelanced called me aside after an interview and said: you listened to her ( my interviewee). She had said something three minutes earlier which prodded me to return to that question at the right time.
I managed a good early run in the field of reporting, but each step was a battle made no easier from the last assignment. Yet when one avenue failed to work I’d pack my bags and move somewhere else.
I relocated to South Africa, courtesy of sponsored tickets from British and South African Airways. A testy on air discussion with the then South African embassy would yield the opportunity. In South Africa, looking back I don’t know how I did it, but with an old fashioned tape recorder (uher) and intense curiosity I travelled the breadth of South Africa reporting from politics, violent clashes, social issues and entertainment and sport.
It would culminate in an hour documentary on BBC Radio Four examining the lives and voting intentions of four young Black and Brown professionals voting in their first election. Increasingly too the World Service took my reports.
I left South Africa in 1994 after almost two years ready to take on the world. No fears! And it would happen when an utterly new idea in journalism surfaced. A mysterious note appeared in the British newspapers. We’re looking for videojournalists. It’s the equivalent today if someone said to you we’re looking for Nuclearvideo journalists. What is that! I mumbelled transfixed by its message that the journalist would do everything.
The interviewer let slip that they’d had 3000 applicants for 30 spots. I was confident I had something to offer. If I could run around the townships looking for stories, London wouldn’t put me off.
I was in. Channel One today is a footnote in journalism, yet apart from its ground breaking approach to storytelling which is common place today. It did something few if any outfits can replicate. Of the thirty journalists, almost a third were people of colour (20%) and nearly half were women.
It paved the way to work on one of the best TV news programmes on British TV and with one of its then titans.
I had other deep areas of interest that journalism’s division of labour approach could not facilitate. My intense curiosity about online however after 2001 got the better of me and that’s how I how I fell into interdisciplinary work. This included:
- Advertising ( working as a creative director for a giant in advertising Jon Staton who was ex-head of TV at Saatchi and Saatchi.
- Tech (working with dotcoms; I was Justgivings launch head of news)
- Art (being an artist in residence at the Southbank Centre)
- Creativity creating digital platforms and helping students launch start-up ideas.
- Digital ( creating platforms for clients and award winning work work e.g www.viewmgazine.tv
- Lecturing and consulting ( I wanted to share what I knew).
Journalism can be easily taught, but it’s the black box we all carry that takes time and consideration. Consider this too, times change, societies change, tech changes and in doing so alters the structures of human interaction and hence how journalism is required to respond. Its antipathy to change doesn’t always allow it and in some cases its resoluteness is required e.g. impartiality.
But here’s the big question ahead as we inch to 2030 and a world that will be AI-data-and psycho warfare driven. What of journalism then? What might it look like? Ask any journalists this and you’ll get a response. I’ve been fortunate in my career to be involved in three big template shifts, where social tech impacted journalism practise. The next big change will be as cultural as it is technological and hence will require training a new type of journalist. How much the industry is prepping for this, is another matter. That’s what’s exciting me at the moment. Click here for free download of Media Hyphenates which brings young global talent and experts together, created using AI.
