We seem to be in the eye of a perfect storm. At a time when we are supposed to be surfing the web 2.0 wave and mastering convergence journalism, the recession has meant a tide of redundancies and job freezes. A click through the main job sites shows that in just a year opportunities for journalists, even in the once burgeoning online sector, have evaporated (although I did find one for an online journalist which offered a £50 day rate - I'm guessing you would have to bring in your own teabags).

So, how do you ride this one out? It's no use sitting it out and waiting for the calm because there isn't going to be one. You will end up getting marooned looking out to a multimedia landscape where the folks tweet and blog and podcast and... well, you get the picture.

On this island no one will hear you when you scream: "I'm a bloody journalist. Never mind this multimedia bollocks - it's all about getting the story!"

Journalists in previous downturns have clung on to their jobs, or picked up shifts on the Monday after being dumped on the Friday. But freelance shifts are drying up as papers and magazines try to keep costs down. And websites have become more creative in reconstituting material and using links to free material such as YouTube. I was once told by an old chief sub, "You'll never go hungry if you can sub." But I'm not sure if this is true anymore as reporters start to file to templates and are encouraged to write their own headlines.

Training and relevant skills are still key, but perhaps journalists also need to think about being creative, enterprising and entrepreneurial. They may take on new roles as bloggers or social media experts or find themselves reorganising teams for a convergent newsroom. They may set up their own websites or come up with new ideas they trial online and then sell to mainstream media. They may have to think about being a media professional who combines journalism, PR and marketing or a sub who can design a website; or an investigative journalist, who becomes a videographer broadcasting to the world via the internet, bypassing the mainstream broadcasters.

For those trying to get a step on the ladder these are challenging times, but for mid-career journalists there are new challengers as well - citizen journalists and digitally agile youngsters, who know their CEOs from their SEOs, what the best medium is to tell a story in and how to spike the interest of readers and target new audiences.

There are so many, new, exciting ways of getting your story out. As Andy Capper, who works on Vice magazine's TV spin-off, wrote in The Guardian: "What I hope people get from watching our films is that we are bored of 'guy behind a news desk' objectivity and people outside of situations reading press releases issued by the council or press office.

"Increasingly, mainstream TV paints 'normal people' as idiots who audition for talent shows, turn up on Jeremy Kyle to lie about how bad their lives are, or turn up to flashmob events so they can dance to Abba for a mobile phone advert. What we've found is that reality is far more entertaining than anything a marketing agency or focus group-obsessed commissioning editor can dream up."

More than a quarter of a century ago I got my first job as a reporter on the Surrey Comet in Kingston on the strength of 100 words per minute shorthand and a bag of scrappy cuttings. These days Kerry Grove, a senior reporter on the Comet, and a graduate of Bournemouth Media School, is bagging stories and equipped to tell them in print, online as well as via radio and TV.

"There's so much more to think about now. I've got to get the killer story, but I've also got to think about how best to tell it. I'm tracking people down using Facebook and thinking about whether there is good background material I can use on YouTube. It's not just about filing 350 words any more," says Grove.

Sarah Kennedy helps to run the Team Dorset website which promotes the area's involvement with the 2012 Olympics. She had to prove her credentials for the job by writing articles, developing the website, setting up usability tests and focus groups, and thinking about PR and marketing opportunities. Now she's on the look-out for colleagues with a similar portfolio of skills.

For those who need to hone their skills there are training courses available online and for media professionals who want to come up for air and explore new opportunities Bournemouth is offering a number of 'mixtape' short courses, where it is possible to study convergence journalism and entrepreneurial journalism alongside other units, such as media leadership and future media platforms and environments.

These two-day 'retreats' focus on industry trends and are a chance to network with like-minded media professionals, online and face-to-face. For those looking at what their next step might be there is the chance to come up with a strategy for their organisation or themselves which will be developed over seven weeks of online tuition with academics, practitioners and experts in their field. Who knows, you might come up with a cool web feature or create your own online portfolio.

Following a week when Vogue profiled online commentator The Sartorialist; the LA Times interviewed celebrity blogger Perez Hilton; Grazia featured the lifestyle musings of The Selby; and The Guardian reported on Vice magazine's DIY documentaries, it can't be too long before journalists get tired of writing about this new breed of enterprising storytellers and come up with new ideas so they can get in on the act themselves.

Liisa Rohumaa is the ex-news editor of FT.com and is currently running a short course on convergent journalism at Bournemouth University.