Mod·ern Jour·nal·ist -noun : a person engaged in gathering, verifying, editing, organizing and sharing useful information for a public audience; especially : one who adapts to the use of new technology to tell stories.

The Idea

To provide tools, tips and resources about online journalism, digital reporting, interactive storytelling, and conversation about the future of news.

The Origin

Nathan Gibbs founded ModernJournalist.com to help journalists explore new tools in online storytelling. Gibbs launched the website in the fall of 2010 to accompany a multimedia journalism course at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California.

The Status

Modern Journalist currently uses Twitter as its primary vehicle: @ModernJourno. Gibbs posts links to articles, tutorials, research and tools to help journalists stay aware of the latest trends.

The Name

How do you describe someone who tells stories using some combination of writing, photography, audio, video, programming, design, data visualization, blogging and social media? Is “multimedia” redundant because “media” is plural for more than one medium? (Also, we don’t typically consider printed journalism to be multimedia even though it’s always combined images, text and graphics.) What about a “digital” journalist? One wonders if they eat pixels for breakfast.

The moniker “modern journalist” attempts to simplify the labels given to those doing cross-platform storytelling.