• Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.

    So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

    — Mark Twain

  • Sarah JacksonPhoto credit: Matt Law

    >> Find Matt Law's incredible photojournalism portfolio here.

  • Want to connect?

    Drop me a line if you're interested in hiring me or talking journalism. I'm experienced in:

    Broadcast production, reporting, editing, web production, social media, audio editing, pagination, copywriting and more.
  • open panel

Posts Tagged ‘innovation’

Fear: the reason for journalism’s meltdown

There is an unmistakable power in the written word. But what do you do when you go to work?

Do you groggily concern yourself with making the perfect cup of coffee before sitting down to skim-read your PR-laden email for potential stories, check the news to play catch-up on missed scoops and phone your favourite contact, hoping for a juicy tip?

Yeah. I thought so.

Wake up, people.

Do you really contemplate how lucky you are to be reporting the stories, rather than being the story, when you’re interviewing one of Downtown Eastside’s drug addicts for a sensational sob story before heading back to your comfortable law-abiding office to count the minutes until you can abandon the leather office chair in exchange for home’s lazy-boy couch and HDTV?

Do you think about the huge opportunity you have each day to cause reform, bring justice and give light to unspoken darkness and to ground the community …

Read More
 

July 19, 2010   Tags: , , , , , ,
Category: Journalism   No Comments comments

Journalism in an Old-Spice era: branding is everything

The old cliché that one is one’s “own worst enemy” might well be true when it comes to newspapers.

Organizations are systematic. They create policies, crunch numbers, build hierarchies and they make cuts according to an assumed lack of value. But managements wrongly continue to depend on financial reports as an indicator of value.

Haven’t we learned anything from web startups? What do Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and so many other revolutionizing internet startups have in common? They started from nothing more than a little entrepreneurial thinking.

While journalists loll around arguing the merits of newspaper-funding ideas, they are stuck thinking in the past. So, please, I’m tired of hearing about how to “save” journalism, because the only ones who are talking about that are talking about a journalism that is already dead. You see, none of these huge internet startups began from the mindset, “Let’s see how we can do something like …

Read More
 

July 17, 2010   Tags: , , , , , ,
Category: Journalism   No Comments comments

Dollars and sense

Making sense of the economic crisis is not difficult.

Fault lies with the businesses that continued broken, outdated policies and those that took advantage of consumers for a temporary gain, without heeding future consequences. Lack of credit is a huge consequence, and it led to a lack of finances, which led to less purchasing power and a falling stock market and widespread panic.

And look to the “big three.” Why weren’t they making enough money to provide for themselves? People didn’t want their products. They didn’t keep up with the innovation and new technology that international automakers offered.

The media allowed itself to fall into the same pit. Innovation and new technology? Got it. But is it what consumers want? Why aren’t we asking them? The consumers are not the journalists, not the newspapers, not the atypical social media literate individuals. The consumers are everyone, everywhere, who are subjected to media as …

Read More
 

January 28, 2009   Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Category: News   No Comments comments

© 2012 Sarah Jackson