Steve Outing, writing in Editor & Publisher, offers advice to small newspapers in order to “keep up with the times and resist the industrywide trend of flat or declining print readership and loss of advertising dollars to new forms of media.” One of the 10 tips: Don’t hire print-focused journalists.

I first read this tip on Jim Horton’s blog; Jim noted that the same advice could apply to companies and agencies hiring PR practitioners. Here’s what Outing says:

My advice is to ONLY hire people whose skills cross media platforms. Look for people who not only understand and are enthusiastic about online media, but who also can serve the print edition well. If a job candidate says she has always aspired to be a newspaper reporter, and doesn’t come in the door with some multimedia skills and experience such as video and audio production, frankly I’d keep looking. You might even go so far as to look skeptically at candidates who look great when it comes to new-media skills but lack the experience or motivation to work on the print side, if you simply can’t afford that much specialization.

Add online channels to the audio and video dimensions of Outing’s statement, and you have the makings of a significant change to a PR practitioner’s job description. Interestingly, Gary Goldhammer reports that California’s Riverside Press-Enterprise is requiring entry-level reporters to shoot video of the stories they cover in addition to hammering out the traditional text articles. “The directive is optional for older or more established reporters, but the message is clear,” Gary writes. “Get with the future or get out.”

Gary makes it clear that the technical skills involved in video or audio production, in and of themselves, don’t mean much:

But rather than shoot video for video???s sake, tomorrow???s journalists need to learn how to be visual and audio storytellers. Just using the technology doesn???t make you relevant or hip ??? you can shoot all the video you want, but if it doesn???t tell a story, then you are wasting the audience???s time.

The point, though, is that the future of communication—whether it’s PR or journalism—is multi-channel and multimedia. Practitioners will need the skills as well as the knowledge to apply them well, but as Outing notes, specialization in a single medium won’t cut it.