The doldrums are a region of weather activity near the equator. Captains knew to carefully navigate around these areas by sticking to the North or South of them in an area called the trade winds region. They were called trade winds, as far as I know, because the ships of commerce and trade utilized these winds to deliver their goods around the flat earth. If a ship wandered into the doldrums, it could be weeks before a good wind would rescue the crew from blazing sun and heat.
The Multimedia Newsroom is in the doldrums.
Oh, I don't mean there isn't plenty of work going on, but the lack of students creates a calmness about the place. I enter the newsroom and go to work on any of the numerous pages we are updating and creating for a fun filled fall semester. I'm learning how to hack this new software with some success. Things need to get done and the days, while long, persist in their regular schedule.
News has always been fairly slow this time of year, at least on a local level. Even local papers are headlining musicians instead of politicians or criminals.
Something I forgot to mention about the doldroms, and it completes my metaphor well. Hurricanes are known to originate out of the doldroms. Great forces of unimaginable natural might come whipping out of this region and make the masses pay attention.
I hope we are working in ways that see beyond the normal trade winds of newsroom functions. So many newsrooms already have that function down to a science. Many of them are probably making a rounder wheel, but overall, I bet it's the same.
We are designing and working on things that influence the future journalists, the students. I hope that grows to become a hurricane. I stumbled upon a site that says we aren't the only ones trying by far. Imagine a world with free broadcast television and radio for anyone with an internet connection.
I'm crazy?
Some pioneering students, writing their own software at the University of Texas at Austin, don't think so.
Innovations like this, by other major universities, encourage me to believe something is, indeed, happening. It is still unknown to most of us. But I feel part of the process.
In the past, major innovations were hailed and noticed by the world. Think of the dawn of telephone, radio and television and how they must have just shook the earth when they came out. Remember your final excitement at the release of DVD players, whenever you finally gave in and finally bought one. Remember that fanfair, and now forget it.
I predict that new technologies will take on about as much notice as more efficient cars and smaller cell phones. The public expects innovation now. So, to those news distributors of old out there, beware. The most quiet hurricane you ever did see is probably on land as we speak.
I couldn't be happier in the doldrums.
