Remembering Salad Days

Ah yes, the SPJ convention of 1983 in our nation's capital. Sam Donaldson was the brash enemy of the Republican White House, and ABCNEWS had launched its new brand -- World News Tonight -- a little earlier. (Um, I'm the one WITH hair in college, thank you)

My classmates arrived in DC as specialists -- print, radio-TV or advertising. Today's news from ABC is quite different -- the entire news division offered buyouts. Terms tossed around in the story like "digital journalists."

Preditors. Multi-taskers. Multi-medias. Convergence. Pick your term, but what appears a reality today for traditional legacy news is tomorrow's fate for SIDs.

Ask yourself -- can you rough cut video? Script out a podcast or sound bite? Keep pace to write a real-time blog? Someday, excellence in individual tasks may return, but for the short term future, the mechanic will reign, the general practitioner, the renaissance SID: good all, great at none.