Greenslade still views the web as “newsprint’s real enemy,” though the two have made strange bedfellows as of late. “The race is on,” he says, “to find ways of raising screen revenue before the newsprint revenue runs out altogether.”

“Though website designs are important, they are formats which require many fewer layout tricks to capture audiences. What counts is the content itself,” argues Greenslade. “And even that doesn't have to be as polished as the finalized version prepared for a newspaper that cannot be changed once it leaves the print plant.”

Wells disagrees, and points to several examples of multimedia content in which good display skills have played a large role. One is the Washington Post site’s OnBeing feature, a series of documentary-style videos about ordinary people. This production required entirely new skills for newspaper journalists, and relied heavily on presentation.

Further, he discusses the Guardian's online feature commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Falkan war. The feature is a multimedia package programmed in Flash. Everyone on the project had at one point worked on the Guardian print edition, from the interviewers (Guardian journalists) to the videographers (former still photographers) to the Flash programmer.

“There will be an interesting transition over the next few years, as innovative newspapers recruit new people with the expertise and imagination to present stories in exciting ways,” says Wells. “The ‘techies’ who once were banished to the basement will be brought ever closer to the centre of newspapers' online production.”

Wells even foresees some of most creative Internet work being carried out by those very “techies,” who could come to be seen as journalists.

Source: Media Guardian, Greenslade on Media Guardian