Dept. of You *Are* Kidding, Right?
Wednesday, 1 May 2013 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaffyr Pop Quiz
Say you're a professional journalist, one who makes her living by writing stories and taking notes. That's what you do, using your fingers to type all day, using your computer to do research, popping back and forth between screens full of interview notes, web research and the story that you have underway.
Say your company gives you an iPad that you didn't ask for. Say the iPad doesn't easily allow you to switch screens, not unless you can find and use a clunky app. Say it doesn't easily connect to the editorial copy system that your company uses. Say that the keyboard options you have for the iPad are a small rubberized one that your company issued to you, or the electronic one that appears on the screen, shrinking the available screen size even more.
Then say your company issues an edict that you have to return the Macbook laptop it issued you several years ago, which has a keyboard large enough to do regular typing, and a screen and operating system that provides for multiple screens, ease of connectivity to the editorial copy system, etc. etc., yada-yada.
Say company honchos tell you that from now on you have to do all your writing on the iPad. That's not "in an emergency while on the road." That's not "an occasional story." That's forever. No actual computer, like the big kids have.
Say you're a professional journalist, one who makes her living by writing stories and taking notes. That's what you do, using your fingers to type all day, using your computer to do research, popping back and forth between screens full of interview notes, web research and the story that you have underway.
Say your company gives you an iPad that you didn't ask for. Say the iPad doesn't easily allow you to switch screens, not unless you can find and use a clunky app. Say it doesn't easily connect to the editorial copy system that your company uses. Say that the keyboard options you have for the iPad are a small rubberized one that your company issued to you, or the electronic one that appears on the screen, shrinking the available screen size even more.
Then say your company issues an edict that you have to return the Macbook laptop it issued you several years ago, which has a keyboard large enough to do regular typing, and a screen and operating system that provides for multiple screens, ease of connectivity to the editorial copy system, etc. etc., yada-yada.
Say company honchos tell you that from now on you have to do all your writing on the iPad. That's not "in an emergency while on the road." That's not "an occasional story." That's forever. No actual computer, like the big kids have.
Poll #13334 A Measured Response to Journalistic iPad Mandates
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16
After a minute's thought
View Answers
No.
3 (18.8%)
No, really. No6 (37.5%)
Are you kidding?6 (37.5%)
Hell, no!7 (43.8%)
Here's your iPad back.11 (68.8%)
After further deliberations
View Answers
No.5 (33.3%)
Still no.8 (53.3%)
It's not happening.7 (46.7%)
I've filed a grievance.9 (60.0%)
You, sir, are an idiot.11 (73.3%)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 1 May 2013 05:06 pm (UTC)Seriously, though, my husband asked me if I wanted to trade my MacBook which was purchased explicitly to the specifications of my writing for an iPad. I told him I'd do it when they had a hologram screen feature so I could see what I was doing while doing it.
If you type 100 words a minute, texting doesn't come easy.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 1 May 2013 05:38 pm (UTC)Yes, that's pretty much every staffer's reaction thus far. Our problem is that these were mandated by someone at the very top of the food chain, someone whose main interest is to show that his staff has the shiniest new toys — the kind he likes to play with as a non-journalist — even if they were never designed for the job. Gah.
(And feel free to click on through to take the poll. It didn't transfer over when I cross-posted it from Dreamwidth, but you can still take it over there. I'm interested in the kind of monumentally non-scientific responses I'll get. Heh.)