I was watching the launch event for the Tow-Kight Center at CUNY Grad School of Journalism this morning.
Jeff Jarvis moderates a great discussion with Google’s Marissa Mayer and AOL’s Tim Armstrong on the potential futures of journalism.
At one point, Tim Armstrong talks about how he discovered many of his journalists weren’t using the company CMS system (start watching at 39:30). Instead, it was a convoluted system of Microsoft Word and go-betweens to post stories. Armstrong ended by saying, “Journalists have to use Internet technology.”
My thoughts about ScreenPug match this line of thinking. The idea that authors are not using a tool to create books right now that allows collaboration with editors and publishes to screens with the push of a button is downright crazy.
I spent the weekend at StartupWeekend in Portland and had the opportunity to pitch the idea to a room of 90. After the votes were cast, ScreenPug failed to make the top 12, but the conversations that ensued over the weekend showed how the pitch could be improved and how the idea could evolve into something even better.