You're absolutely right and there's particular reasons journalists work like that. One reason being security, and the other being there's currently no better way to take notes or store story data. Also those notes aren't searchable if I need to access them at a moments notice.
I'm not saying that a reporter won't use a notebook - but reporters have to keep these notes for years and over the course of a career you might go through boxes and boxes of notepads. And what happens if your editor asks you to call someone you did a story on 4 or 10 years ago? Those notes could be stored in a box at home so may not be easy to access. They also are your security if someone sues you or your company and could be used as evidence so you have to store your notes somewhere. And if you're someone who takes voice recordings, where do you store these securely? And what do you do if you have a mixture of written notes and recordings on someone?
I've also spoken with many reporters who store their contacts on their iPhone... but then never back those contacts up. If they lose their phone they lose all that information. I worked in one newsroom where many people stored their contacts in a word document, and in another newsroom they were stored in this archaic television broadcast software not designed for the purpose. It's just a really inefficient and insecure way to work.
Evernote is great - I love it as a product. But it's not designed around the way reporters work or the type of information we collect. That's why I see the value in a new product.
The main thing I need to do is convince reporters of the value in having that information stored in Coporter, and if I can get digital staff using it then they will encourage other reporters to use it.
It seems like there are two separate interests: long term storage and quick retrieval. The first requires a very high standard of care in regard to reliability [I'd bet disks go bad and companies go out of business more frequently than reporters who care about such things lose a file box full of notepads]. It feels like hardware.
The second seems an expectation of technological progress problem. Maybe it is software over the hardware of the first problem.
Rather than convince people to switch from what mostly works to the unknown, make the mostly what works work a little more often. There's a regression test there.
I'm not saying that a reporter won't use a notebook - but reporters have to keep these notes for years and over the course of a career you might go through boxes and boxes of notepads. And what happens if your editor asks you to call someone you did a story on 4 or 10 years ago? Those notes could be stored in a box at home so may not be easy to access. They also are your security if someone sues you or your company and could be used as evidence so you have to store your notes somewhere. And if you're someone who takes voice recordings, where do you store these securely? And what do you do if you have a mixture of written notes and recordings on someone?
I've also spoken with many reporters who store their contacts on their iPhone... but then never back those contacts up. If they lose their phone they lose all that information. I worked in one newsroom where many people stored their contacts in a word document, and in another newsroom they were stored in this archaic television broadcast software not designed for the purpose. It's just a really inefficient and insecure way to work.
Evernote is great - I love it as a product. But it's not designed around the way reporters work or the type of information we collect. That's why I see the value in a new product.
The main thing I need to do is convince reporters of the value in having that information stored in Coporter, and if I can get digital staff using it then they will encourage other reporters to use it.