Barnes: COVID-19 has changed media forever
AS INTERNATIONAL markets continue to reel from the devastating economic fallout triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, media industry experts are pointing to efficiency gains being achieved in the work environment, which is being redefined – perhaps irreversibly.
Even as they expressed concerns about content privacy, the availability of consistent, reliable bandwidth service, and cybersecurity, participants in yesterday’s World Press Freedom Day Webinar hosted by the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) agreed that organisational structures and processes for some media houses were being reset.
World Press Freedom Day was celebrated on Sunday.
President of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), Christopher Barnes, described COVID-19 as an enabler as a result of the changes which it has forced on the 185-year-old Gleaner newspaper and 70-year-old multimedia Radio Jamaica that comprise the RJRGLEANER Communications Group, of which he is chief operating officer.
Steeped in tradition with its employees used to face-to-face board and other meetings, workers were now reportedly getting acclimatised to virtual meetings, using Zoom and other digital platforms. Barnes admits to being hooked.
“I’m far more productive than I have ever been and I don’t know where work stops,” he told the webinar.
“Coming out of this, anybody who believes that things are going to go back to being the same, they are dreaming. It’s not going to happen,” he warned. “Fundamentally, newspaper operations are going to change.”
FORCED ONLINE
Meanwhile, Dr Livingston White, director of the Caribbean School of Media and Communication (CARIMAC) at The University of the West Indies, Mona campus, spoke of the lessons being learnt by educators at the institution as COVID-19 dictated the curriculum.
“Many things that we thought we could not have done, we’re now forced to do them.
When I look at how our lecturers have gone online and are willing to use the technology to teach, coming up with creative way to deliver the curriculum, and this was something they weren’t willing to do before,” said White.
The CARIMAC director said that the new paradigm of work had convinced the school to make one fundamental change whenever it plans to refresh its equipment inventory: dumping desktops for laptops.
“We are giving everybody laptops because we are thinking of the next pandemic or natural disaster. That is, we have to immediately shift mode to working remotely,” White said.