Invasion of the techno zombies

Ever been in this scenario? You meet your favourite peeps after work for appies and drinks and discover they’ve turned into techno zombies.

They’re iPhone obsessed or addicted to a Crackberry. In other words, they suffer from iDisorder – an obsession with mobile media technology.

You realize your friends require an intervention because their eyes flutter back and forth between you and their smartphone as you’re talking to them. When there’s a break in the conversation they mumble,”Jus a sec.” and start emailing or texting someone.

When the discussion resumes, they start talking about the time they lost their iPhone on SkyTrain.

“I felt so naked without it. I panicked,” they say.

Their admission gets sympathetic nods from the other zombies.

“I once took a cab home at lunch because I forgot my phone when I left for work in the morning,” admits your lawyer friend.

“I can’t function without it,” adds the social media specialist.

The worst one in the crowd is your buddy who’s a journalist. That’s because she has two obsessions, her iPhone and breaking news. She’s constantly checking headlines from various news outlet websites. When a news story breaks, her fingers are a blur as she tweets the latest story on her smartphone.

The growing number of techno zombies is a good reason to support a Technology Sabbath. Once a week we all need to reconnect with ourselves, family and friends. That’s not something you can do face to screen with your smartphone or hypnotized by your tablet or computer screen.

There’s a great article about unplugging from technology on the PBS MediaShift website. You can also learn more by reading the Technology Sabbath manifesto and the Huffington Post has a great article about smartphone obsession.

I would recommend you read these articles and then go for a walk, meditate, talk with others or anything else that doesn’t involve technology.

To learn more about digital journalism, enrol in the New Media Journalism Certificate program offered by Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies.

For more discussions and articles on digital journalism, go to SFU’s New Media Journalism on Twitter and Facebook .

A first for digital journalism

The Pulitzer Prize medal.

If digital journalism needed an official endorsement, it got it Monday (April 16) when the online-only Huffington Post and reporter David Wood received a Pulitzer Prize. Wood’s series Beyond the Battlefield took the honour in the national reporting category. The series delved into the challenges faced by severely wounded American soldiers after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan tours.

The Huffington Post’s win represents the first Pulitzer for a digital only news outlet. But it’s not the first time they’ve recognized online journalism. In 2010 the Seattle Times received the prize for breaking news as a result of its coverage of the shooting deaths of four police officers in a coffee shop. The Pulitzer singled the out the Times for both its online and print coverage.

The Pulitzer Prize board, to its credit, has not separated digital and print journalism. Instead they have melded the two together in awarding its prizes. Good journalism, according to the Pulitzers, can be found in both formats.

To learn more about digital journalism, enrol in the New Media Journalism Certificate program offered by Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies. Click hereto register for a June 23 information session on the program.