Out With A Bang

Fair play to Mr Dear.

And a thank you, too. It’s cheering, occasionally, to be a little blip on someone else’s radar.

http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/533301.php

Because as my NUJ card-carrying Mrs waits to discover what filling out a time-sheet for a week means for our family’s fortunes this spring, it’s good to see the NUJ sensing that there is a common cause to be had here; that maybe the answer to some of the challenges we, as journalists, face in 2009 might have to come from within our own ranks…

… that the reinvention might have to be as much about the way that we, ourselves, go about our business as anything that a Trinity or a Johnston or an Archant might do to ‘help’ us have a career come 2010.

It would also be a help if I knew that an Archant pension would still be there come 2027… but, hey-ho…

In the meantime, we green shoots need to find as many new pals as we can; for there is absolutely no guarantee that we will not get trodden under-foot in the none-too-distant future.

The theory was always there… journalism as a networked, cottage industry; freed from both the Press barons and the presses that we could never, ever afford.

We now control the means of our own production; for sickle and scythe, read lap-top and mobile.

After that, brothers and sisters, the world can still be ours. Still not wholly sure how, yet…

But, in fag-packet theory – particularly if I can now cascade central and regional Government advertising down my network – I can do www.myfootballwriter.com/sheffieldunited www.myfootballwriter.com/barnsley www.myfootballwriter.com/sheffieldwednesday; build a Championship-wide network; syndicate our content up into the Telegraph sports desk; sideways into www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire in return for some of their TV…. get Mr Lotto to run his ads through everyone’s Addiply…

… and all the while giving Messrs James Shields, Paul Thompson and Simon Meaks the prospect of a potentially decent lifestyle as and when the Star ever sets on Sheffield and threatens to take three more decent football writers with it.

And what you do with MyFootballWriter.com, you just repeat with MyLocalWriter.com. Just bolt a postcode on the back.

But it’s not going to happen off my kitchen table; we’re never going to do this on our own; if we start to find common cause and purpose with both the Government and the Union, then – perhaps – we’ve got a chance.

But, at least, the debate is moving… as it needed to, IMHO.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=148