The Point | Journalism's future is in global dialogue

Unlike with TV and radio, which are stuck with people reading out loud, customers of digital journalism will get the best of all media forms. They can wade into any story that attracts them as deeply as they wish. Readers will gravitate toward prose, while those who prefer sounds and images can simply watch and listen. The digital report will not be locked into the strict chronological format of TV and radio news, but will be much more like a newspaper, which permits you to begin with sports and weather, if you wish, or go right to the editorials or comics.

The old idea of reporters covering a beat might well be replaced by an online reporter/editor who oversees a subject area driven by the entire community - a constantly updating police blotter or transit map, for instance. Digital thinkers refer to this as a pro-am (professional-amateur) model, in which the reporter is corrected, tipped off and guided - just as I was with Black Hawk Down - by the expertise of his readers. Blog sites offer a rudimentary working model.

Old fuddy-duddies like me will still want their news on paper and in the driveway every morning, but we won't live forever, and already two of the biggest newspapers in America - the New York Times and the Washington Post - are reaching more customers online than in print.

I advise young journalists today to learn how to use a digital video camera, and to get used to working in multimedia. Nearly every story I write today for the Atlantic, and every book I undertake, I do in conjunction with a documentary filmmaker. This results in a documentary version of the story, which can be marketed to TV but also compiles the audio and video needed to produce a Web presentation comparable to Jennifer Musser-Metz's Black Hawk Down project.

If a dinosaur like me can do that, just think what a creative young mind raised in front of a video screen and keyboard will come up with. I literally can't imagine.