Exciting changes for journalists

Journalism has progressed since the beginning of my career in the early 1980s from manual typewriters and carbon paper between small sheets of copy paper to computer screens and now online blogs.

I started on computers in Mount Isa, transferred to London and had to revert to manual typewriters and copy paper then back home to computers again.

The technological changes have already altered the way reporters work and the way audiences receive their news every day.

For ten years, I have worked remotely from my newspaper office, faxing or emailing stories to Brisbane for publication.

In 1997 I typed a story on a computer, printed it out and drove to the local post office to fax it to Brisbane where the story was re-typed by copy takers.

The deadlines were early because of the process.

A couple of years later I was set up to email directly to the subs desk and breaking news could be in my head at 7pm and on the page by 8pm despite the 130km distance from reporter to printing press.

News websites and news blogs will, over time, reduce the number of newspapers published.Audiences and reporters are already linked by the web.

Constrictions created by hardcopy newspapers such as story length, time delays, printing and distribution are gone.

The freedom offered to reporters is only just beginning to change the way the industry works day to day.

However newspaper reporters already routinely taking digital recorders to record sources and upload the interviews to newspaper websites and digital cameras to upload digital video.