Interesting insights at IDG

IDG Charman Pat McGovern has some interesting thoughts about the change in journalism as Mark Glaser of the MediaShift blog interviews him about IDG's decision to take InfoWorld online only.

I thought this one was especially good:

Pat McGovern: I talked to the dean of the journalism school at Columbia University recently, and he said the whole career of journalism is being rethought. You used to get trained and get your master’s in journalism and you went to work for a publishing company and built your career as an employee. Today you start a blog and get a lot of references and get famous and your name is your brand. You can get paid for speeches and to go to conferences, and then a book publisher comes through and wants to synthesize what you’ve written on your blog into a book.

With speaking fees and book royalties you could be making $500,000 or $600,000 a year, and the poor journalist is making $70,000 or $80,000 a year working as an employee. So there are a lot of people who are realizing that there’s a lucrative career making a name for themselves instead of being an employee.