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Due to the shifting media landscape, journalists find themselves chasing audiences across multiple platforms as they attempt to remain relevant. From print to digital to mobile, we desperately seek the next way to reach people.

But is the content getting any better or are we just relying on The Next Big Thing in our bloodlust for audience retention?

The trailer for “A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas in 3D” openly mocks what we must take seriously: the use of tools for the sake of using them.

As journalists receive more media tools, storytelling has taken a backseat to technology. We tend to care more about what we can do as opposed to what we should do.

People have always loved storytelling and while the medium has changed from oral to written to digital, the underlying value has always resided with the quality of the stories themselves.

Technological advancements are meant to help tell those stories, but far too often, journalists get caught up in the race to make their content brighter and shinier instead of stronger and better.

Although it is easy to see this in the case of “Harold and Kumar,” we often miss it in our news coverage. We have journalists using digital touch screens to show accident reenactments, weathercasters who have temperatures fly in via 3-D enhancements and websites that are laden with special effects but lack original content.

Is the content better? Who cares! We’ve got Flash capability on our mobile app!

As we continue to work with digital content, we cannot forget that content is king. 

The technological opportunities are merely tools and we must treat them as such. For each job, a proper tool must be selected.

A hammer is a fine tool, but I wouldn’t use it to change a light bulb.