16
March
2010
|
07:39 AM
America/Los_Angeles

Media Engineers At New York Times And CNN

The Guardian.uk has an article about how the New York Times and CNN are becoming technology companies.

How the New York Times and CNN try to keep up with the tech companies

"The New York Times is now as much a technology company as a journalism company," its executive editor Bill Keller said recently.
...
While CNN.com closely collaborates with technology companies like Facebook, Apple or Google, the New York Times anticipates technical change in-house with the help of its research and development department.
...
"We made an experiment and put an RFID chip into the phone, the computer and the television. The chip was there to track the user's reading. When a user stopped reading a story on the phone as he or she arrived at work, it opened it again on the desktop. When the user entered the living room, related videos to the story were presented on the television screen," explains the NYT's Nick Bilton.
...
CNN has launched an iPhone application, redesigned its website and reached out more to social media. CNN was among the first TV broadcasters to understand the full impact of social media on television, and teamed up with Facebook for the presidential inauguration.
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Today, CNN's iPhone app is as much a news-making as a news delivering application, and as the iReporters can add their telephone number, email and location to their report, CNN's editors can get back to them or even assign them to certain content CNN is looking for.
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...it looks like the news organisations that tear down the wall and build a bridge between editorial and technological thinking will be most likely to survive.

I'm glad to see these types of stories. For the past five years I've been writing about the need for 'media engineers' - part software engineer and part media professional. And also 'media architects' the people the create the media technology infrastructure for media companies (BTW every company is a media company.)

Media engineers will be better paid than software engineers because you need a broader skills set.

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Please see my PearlTree on 'media engineers.' [PearlTrees is an SVW client and it's a great media technology that organizes web pages in a visual way.]


 Media Engineers