Journalists Must Get Out More

The internet is a wonderful thing. You wouldn't be reading this if it didn't exist. But I'm worried a new generation of journalists is emerging that seldom, if ever, ventures beyond cyberspace in the course of finding stories or conducting research, and that's a bad thing. Because the internet is very good at telling us what's on the internet, not what's happening in the real world.

The essence of journalism is keeping eyes and ears open for the unexpected.

That's how I created a twitterstorm - OK, a twitteripple - with a bit of classic observation on the way home from a Radio Academy event in Leeds last Monday night.