CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post - next stop, Meld.

Ruth Pollard had been in the UK for little over four hours when she arrived at UCLan to talk about Meld.

Ruth Pollard had been in the UK for little over four hours when she arrived at UCLan to talk about Meld.

Ruth is Media President of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance in Australia which has recently launched its Future of Journalism project.

She’s visiting Meld after calling on CNN in Atlanta, The New York Times and Washington Post where she’s been looking at how newsrooms are beginning to tackle the move to a digital workflow.

Meld was on Ruth’s UK ‘must see’ list because of the new ‘Pathfinder’ work - a project to develop training tools for future journalists.

Meld pathfinder project

The meld pathfinder project is a collaboration between Sandbox, UCLan’s department of Journalism and journalists from the BBC, Sky TV, the Times, the Independent, Haymarket , Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press and the skills councils who are partnering together to work out what skills journalists will need in 2020 – and developing resources to help meet that need.

Project leader Paul Egglestone said, “I’d been talking to Jonathan Este at the Alliance a few months ago after he’d seen what we were doing with Meld on the Guardian’s web site.

Jonathan suggested Ruth contact us and find out a little more about how we’re tackling issues of convergence from the journalists point of view. It’s something we think we’re good at. We know the relationship between journalists and their audience is changing and that technology has a lot to do with this – but technology is only part of the mix.”

He added: “It’s pretty widely accepted that journalists will be working across a range of platforms in future but there are a whole bunch of other skills that they’ll need in order to do their job effectively. Meld Pathfinder is as much about this as it is recognising the technical skillset people will need”.

Rachel’s whistle stop world tour is continuing with trips to the Times, the Guardian and the Telegraph before returning to Oz to share her findings with Alliance members and colleagues at the Sydney Morning Herald where she is a reporter.