The First Amendment has long been interpreted as meaning the government doesn’t get to determine who is or who isn’t a journalist. For nearly as long the government has done just this when deciding who “qualifies” for the press pass needed for access to official news briefings, interviews and the like. “Legitimate” news organizations got them and, by extension, “illegitimate” ones did not. 

Dear Facebook,

I don't like it, but I accept that you are now part of my editorial operations. My customers want to be where the audience is—and the audience is with you. I've got your icon on my website under every piece of content so that readers can post straight to their Facebook profiles. I've got another icon of yours on my website's homepage inviting readers to find my title on your platform and I've got a fan page set up for my title, maintained by my editorial staff. We're in bed together, Facebook: I give you content; you give me reach.

I’ve been in journalism for close to 30 years. As one would expect, my skills, the tools of the trade and the state of the industry itself have evolved dramatically over that time.

Newsrooms that once functioned under a cloud of cigarette smoke now work in a cloud computing environment. Writers who once tucked a reporter’s notebook in their back pocket now wield a digital voice recorder or a Flip camcorder. Editors who once redlined copy and haggled over how headlines matched the lead art now stress over Web analytics and keyword selection.

Our industry is caught between “what was” and “what will be.”  Which means that “what is” is up for grabs. And when things are up for grabs, people get busy.  Busy preserving their livelihoods, their positions, their power.

Ironically, the preservation of editorial power comes down to language.

The Boston Herald has never been one to update just for the sake of updating. At the Herald (where I used to work) the general theory is, “If it’s good enough for Gutenberg, it’s good enough for us – and besides anything new would cost money.” So now the paper says it is “preparing” to move away from the Atex system it has been using for the last 27 years.

Small media companies need flexible, cost-effective tools that can be ramped up quickly and with little technical expertise. Actually, large media companies want those things as well, but the enterprise requirements of companies with 50 or 100 publications put them in another league.

Here at eMedia Vitals, we run our business almost exclusively using "cloud-based applications". That's the fancy way of saying that the applications we use are on the Internet and we pay for them by the month.