Luis, Totally agree but how do we guarantee that independence of mind and originality can thrive in a media community dominated by infotainment and conformity? Who asks the really hard Qs in the mass media or tries to address them? We saw during the last Oz election that the Afghan war and climate change (as distinct from politics) were submerged by personality politics - in many cases the journalists' personalities.

Top of my list is personal integrity ( and how to maintain it), closely followed by teamwork. It's my privilege to be involved with mentoring young citizen journalists through the Activista Swarm project. Some of them will be the senior journalists of 2050. How would you help to guide those who want a 'career' in current affairs reporting? What do they need to know, what do they need to know how to do? What are the building blocks for adapting to change? But how do you enhance the best aspects of the profession in a mass media dominated by multinationals whose primary goal is profit?

The same skills as today. Principally to resist the need to churn out opinion based on what one's colleagues or the opinion polls are saying and keep some (paid) time for researching the topical questions that require a bit of objective knowledge and understanding, e.g. global warming/climate change/catastrophe theory. A critical capacity and interest in delving beyond the obvious could also be handy. Avoiding the attractions of group smirk should be a prequisite for all adult journalists.

2050 is way too far away for any accurate predictions to be made, or for them to be relevant to anybody starting out in journalism right now. Not a great question.

The skills that will be essential for modern journalists in the newsroom of 2050 will be the ability to make good tea and coffee for Bloggers who tell the facts truthfully and let the reader decide the politics.

Compare 2050 with 1950: Will knowledge of IT code replace shorthand? What kind of literacy will be needed? Will the cub reporter be a multilingual, multimedia, multi-skilled auteur - producing written, audio and visual texts for a wide range of platforms? Will evolving technology such spell/grammar checker and translator, not to mention digital production, enable journalists to concentrate more on content? How will they gather their stories? What kind of human networks will be important? Or are these things just distractions from the essence of jpurnalism? Are a knowledge and understanding of modern history and politics, science and the arts the real deal? Perhaps a passion to pursue difficult, complex issues or to find the voices of 'ordinary' people is the number one criterion for success. What kind of values would media leaders be looking for in their newsrooms? Loyal team players who honour the ethics code to the letter but not necessarily the spirit? What place, nay encouragement, for a independent mind and real skepticism? Will the newsroom be a place for meaningful self analysis and criticism or just a locker room for editorial policy? A thought: what is taught in the myriad journalism courses at our universities? Stand in the shoes of one of the current undergraduates, lucky enough to make a career in journalism, who is looking back on the first half of this century. What would you like to be able to say about your contribution to the fourth estate.