Contemporary writers will never enjoy the same job security and freedom that many magazine journalists enjoyed during the 20th Century. Today, one former Fortune magazine writer offered some advice for the next generation of nonfiction authors.
Today’s installment of Media Beat features former Fortune journalist, and author David Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick discussed his new book, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World.
Here’s an excerpt: “You can’t just be a text journalist anymore. You’ve got to be a video journalist as well as a text journalist. Anybody who wants to have a career as a journalist has to pull every possible lever they can for themselves. Even if they aren’t good on camera, they have to force themselves to learn how to do it. We’re living in a multimedia world and magazines, per se, aren’t even necessarily going to exist in the way they have historically. We can’t take the same sort of highbrow approach we had before, [saying] ‘I’m going to go to work for Fortune and have my career there’–which is what I was fortunate to be able do, but that’s just not possible anymore.”
Part One: David Kirkpatrick Predicts Facebook’s Future
Part Three: David Kirkpatrick Advises Journalists: ‘Write a Book, If You Possibly Can’
Media Beat is mediabistro.com’s interview series with the movers and shakers of the media world. View all past episodes at MediaBeat.com.