"The newsroom has left the building"

"The newsroom has left the building," Media Guardian quotes Chris Nolan as saying at the WeMedia conference.

And... "Jargon alert! Now we have soft media to describe blogs and independent, non-professional media. But that's actually a pretty good term. Can we use that in place of 'citizen journalism' please?"

That, I think, is the contribution of Guardian blogger Jemima Kiss whose pieces I always enjoy reading. Soft media? Maybe, but I still prefer to think in terms of do-it-yourself media. And, believe me, making it can often be hard, not soft. Very hard!

There is no lack these days of conferences and symposia featuring the good and great both from the Web 2.0 community and from the shit-we-need-to-catch-up old media industries.

I think I've found the main difference between the two is summed up in a quotation which I can paraphrase as follows:

"The media establishment people are trying figure out how to do what they've always been doing, making movies, broadcasting, publishing news, whatever, but using the new tools. But the winners are trying to figure out what they can do now thanks to the new tools, that they could never have even dreamed of doing before."

Which also reminds me of what Alvin Toffler said back in 1970, again paraphrased: "If you're doing business today the way you were doing it a couple of years ago, you're doing it wrong!"