Yonkers

Good enough v brilliant – the changing roles of content delivery

With bags of experience as a jobbing journalist, I have been through the fear factor of technological change before. When I was in my 20s, at the vanguard of online writing, I laughed in my youthful way at how people like me were supplanting much more experienced journalists. It's not really funny (people's livelihoods never are). The fundamental difference for my generation is not that I was a better writer. I was just a better all-rounder. In 1990, a good journalist could rely on an editor to polish up their text, research pictures, run a spellcheck and liaise with clients. By 2005, that was the preserve of a select few lucky dinosaurs. I was used to doing it all myself. And I wrote a mental note: don't get lazy. The tech trend is inexorable. Don't think writing is a given living.