Last month, a professional in the information business asked me, “What’s Twitter?”

This question came from a smart and capable guy, and so I was stunned. The best definition I could come up with at first was something stupid like, “Twitter? Uh, it’s . . . Twitter, you know, where you tweet?”

Business people: You are allowed to not like Twitter. You are allowed to not get Twitter. But c’mon, you’ve got to know which technologies are changing how people communicate. Or else, you’re going to get blindsided.

Journalists seem to be having a love affair with Twitter. (Guilty.) But can you blame them for trying? They know what it’s like to be blindsided.

The newspaper implosion shocked a lot of us in print media. McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt said 2008 was the “worst year” of his life. “By far.” He may have been talking about money, but down in the ranks, we were shocked by our loss of authority. We shouldn’t have been. The clues were there all along.

(more…)

What an intriguing voicemail, I thought.

I looked down at the scribbles on my reporter notepad. “Hey Scott,” I said to my editor, “I just got the strangest message. There’s this investment bank that is looking to hire someone to do corporate research, and they got my name.”

Scott didn’t miss a beat: “Call him back.”

I Googled the firm and the stock analyst who’d left the voicemail. He’d been recently quoted in Forbes. I called him back.

That was about one month ago. Fast forward to now. August 12 will be my last day reporting and writing for seattlepi.com. In a few weeks, I will start as a research associate at the investment bank.

If you’d told me last year – nay, last quarter – that I’d quit my journalism job to go work for an investment bank, I would have said, “Get out.” (At least, that was the reaction of my former business editor Margaret when she heard the news, followed by, “Congratulations!”)

But then again, a lot has happened in the past year that I wouldn’t have thought possible. First, I attended the inauguration of the first black president and sat near the front row. Then, Lady Fortune came out of nowhere,  took a big swig of liquid economy, picked up the baseball bat marked “career,” and whacked most of my friends. My newspaper shut down. WaMu disappeared. Back to the point. . .

I’m excited about this transition into a world to which I’m already connected. Often when a business stumps me with some change of direction or unique accounting charge, I turn to analyst experts for help. After about six years of covering the markets and business, now I get to learn what makes Wall Street analysts tick. I never could resist the allure of learning new things!

And so, off I go.

Journalism asks: How can you leave me?

Please do not interpret my leaving seattlepi.com as foreboding about the news site’s future. The Web site commands a high readership and from what I hear from management, the already robust content will get fuller and better with each new partnership and added revenue stream.

Journalism industry watchers would do well to keep an eye on Seattle’s online journalism experiments, from what Hearst is doing at seattlepi.com to the rise of community news blogs that are rich with engagement.

Journalism is a rapidly changing industry, and for the past few years, I’ve had a front row seat.

The future will include more democratization of data, more citizen engagement, more unpaid writers, fewer generalists, more amateurs with fan followings, a greater appreciation for quality business reporting, and a whittling down of traditional journalistic authority against the rise of the niche-hobbyist-turned-pro.

The notion of journalists as gatekeepers is obsolete — those who pridefully struggle to hold onto that antiquated view will watch helplessly as information flows around, over and beneath the gates. Those who humbly embrace these changes will become the new stars, appreciated for their ability to generate unique content while at the same time navigating and making sense of the information flow.

(more…)