Last night, Lisa Wilkinson delivered The Andrew Olle Media Lecture. I read her speech and found it articulate and thought provoking. She comments on the dramatic unexpected change in journalism over the past 16 years, questioning “who needs membership in the mighty journalists’ union, when all you need is a smart phone, an opinion that can be tightly compressed, and the desire to experience the sticky sweet rush of a 140 character tweet gone viral?” Lisa also expresses her concerns about young girls growing up in this day and age, “ being held hostage via social media to the views others have of them, long before they even know who they are themselves.” “I despair of the Instagram culture, where young girls learn to take off as much clothing as possible in order to generate the greatest number of “likes” from an audience too often made up of strangers. This is now the screwed-up arbiter of a girl’s self esteem?” “Back in 1997 the Saturday paper edition of the Sydney Morning Herald was selling a robust 408,000 compared to just over half that now and the proverbial rivers of gold were still flowing; ABCNews24 didn’t yet exist; The Bulletin still had 11 years to run, Nene King was the most powerful person in Australian publishing, Blue Heelers was the Number One show on TV, John Laws was the King of Australian radio, Stuart Littlemore was striking fear as host of Media Watch, OneTel was the country’s hottest telco, TV wunderkind Adam Boland was still a ‘kinde’ in high school; and social media was a bunch of journos at Friday night drinks at the pub across the road from work.” “In 1997, most of us in this room didn’t have an email address, had never been on the internet, there was no Facebook, no smart phones or ipads, no Google, no texting, no Wikipedia. AND we were still a decade away from the first tweet.” “But, with all this pressure to engage with social media, to share of ourselves, our thoughts, our behind-the-scenes moments, add our two cents worth to the day’s hottest hashtag in the constant daily churn and burn of the 24 hour news cycle the problem is this: With it, social media brings a need . . . a need for speed. And obviously, that speed – the greatest weapon social media has going for it – can be the enemy of accuracy – the greatest thing traditional journalism has going for it.” Lisa Wilkinson October 25th 2013 For the full address by Lisa Wilkinson please go to mamamia.au/news/lisa-wilkinsons-andrew-olle-media-lecture/
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 06:52:45 +0000
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