Apparently, the journalism industry cannot multitask

May 21, 2014 - cjr.org - For the Times’ innovation report to stick, its journalists need to be on board

Doing journalism and keeping up with what is happening within journalism and the wider digital ecosystem at the same time is impossible

?????? What ??????

Since when is this unique only to journalism? Many industries require or encourage employees to study new trends and technologies to stay relevant while, obviously, performing their current job duties.

I'm unsure if that opening line from the Columbia Journalism Review article is a joke. If the author intends that sentence to be true, then it's yet another excuse for the demise of many aspects of the newspaper industry. If that's accepted thinking, then journalists should not be surprised when they get left behind.

The author, however, provides a reason for the thinking behind that opening line.

The ability to move at the speed of change is limited in any organization. And in one that has the fixed daily requirements of a print deadline it is slowed to a crawl. It used to be a standard joke at Web conferences that the world of newspaper websites was the trailing edge of all digital publishing.

So the solution is to stop printing, or gradually phase out printing. It's 2014, and many newspaper orgs are still too hindered by printing the daily paper. They are at least five years behind phasing out printing. These orgs have handicapped themselves. This makes that opening line even more ridiculous.

Maybe it should read:

Doing +printjournalism and keeping up with what is happening within journalism and the wider digital ecosystem at the same time is impossible