Gone are the days when a journalist needed to know nothing more than shorthand and how to type.

There are of course many occasions when journalists need to work in silence.

Individual politicians and journalists need to be able to do the same.

What do journalists today need to know or be able to do that is different from the past?

"If a scholar or journalist needs a piece of magic history, it's there."

She assumed that the journalist needed more time to check her facts and put the story together.

The Internet has surely proved that journalists need not all be $30,000-a-year men, or women.

But they say journalists also need to be flexible enough to try new ways of doing their jobs.

In short, journalists need to be more willing to judge factual disputes.

But journalists need to realise that the situation has to change.