Tuesday, 25 September 2007

How is Emap responding to the 'new media' age?

These days, the buzz is all about "multi-platform futures". The theory behind it is that just having your content in "dead tree" format is little outdated. We need content on phones, PDAs, the web, digital TV - everywhere!
As has been blogged previously, Tridion, a new whiz-bang CMS, is coming to some divisions of the company. Emap is also responding by setting up a number of centralised "design factories"
This will mean the merging of some subbing, production and design jobs.Traditionally, individual magazines had their own dedicated production team, it now seems that many of these areas will be pooled.
Some jobs will definitely be axed. In my view, staff at Emap's main offices in Peterborough desperately need a union to defend them. Unfortunately, Emap has a poor reputation when it comes to negotiating with the NUJ.

Other staff will be retrained to deliver content across multi-platforms. This could lead to more jobs. Or it could mean a lot more work for existing staff and no more pay.
All of this bangs home the point that journalist students need to be "fully converged".
It's now no longer possible just to build a career in "print" or "radio" - the journalists of the future must do it all and do it well.

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