As part of our digital newsroom module this term,we have been asked to read Paul Bradshaw's model for the digital news room.

I mentioned it briefly back in September when Paul first published it on his blog,but it has gained fame as the news diamond model.


What Paul proposed was an alternative to the inverted pyramid.

news diamond attempts to illustrate the change from a 19th century product (the article) to a 21st century process: the iterative journalism of new media; the story that is forever ‘unfinished’

Paul continues with the premise that in a world where news generation has been turned on his head,journalists can no longer rely on simply being the processors of information.

the modern journalist’s role needs to move above the content and what this means for the journalist is that

need to collate , synthesise and verify reaction from the blogosphere and other sources. They need to interrogate sources more, to challenge assertions more, and to investigate stories that are going unreported.

and

Some journalists, then, need to develop a community management role, to manage content - to bring together bloggers and sources, to set up aggregation, submission and collaboration systems, and to crowdsource stories that would otherwise be impossible to cover.

This is described as distributive journalism