Brave new world
June 7th, 2007 by Jim KillamI’ve spent the past two days at the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star, specifically to soak up the culture change of a newsroom that has committed to putting all breaking news online first. What I soaked up was a completely new world.
For a few years as an adviser, I would spend a couple of weeks every summer in that newsroom, either as a reporter or a copy editor. My bosses at NIU were smart enough to see the value in this and allow me a couple of weeks away when the students weren’t around. It’s been several years now since I’ve done this – completely my fault and far too long, I quickly realized.
The newsroom looks the same and many of the same faces are there, but everything has changed.
One reporter and one copy editor start at 6 a.m., writing and filing short stories for the Web. These range from briefs, like a quick weather forecast and overnight police and fire reports, to full-blown scoops. This morning, for example, an acquaintance in Hong Kong e-mailed one of the editors an AP photo of a Rockford-area woman who was a contestant on Bob Barker’s final “The Price Is Right” show, taped yesterday. Before 7 a.m., the reporter, Sadie Gurman, had localized the AP story about Barker and it was online. By 8, she had spoken by cell phone to the local winner, still in Los Angeles, and had filed another update. Turns out that the woman was the show’s big winner, snagging two cars, a cruise and other stuff.
Online readers knew all of this a full 24 hours earlier than they would have just a couple years ago, when editors would have simply prepared the story for the next day’s paper and then sat on it, praying that competing TV and radio stations didn’t find out about it. The story would have made it onto the Web site, but only after the print edition hit the streets.
No longer. “News Now” stories are posted online every few minutes and show up as a scrolling list at the top of the homepage, each with a time stamp. Where once the paper updated its site three or four times on a good day, today 40, 50, 60 daily updates are commonplace. The record stands at 71, I’m told.
Sure, there’s risk that electronic competitors will see these stories, pursue them and air them before the next day’s paper comes out. Too bad. The term I heard often was “repurpose,” as in repurposing the day’s online content for the next day’s newspaper. Not the other way around.
Project stories and non-breaking news often still get published simultaneously in print and online (after being promoted online). Sometimes longer versions of the online updates appear in print the next day. But everything is carefully integrated. User traffic to the day’s online updates stories helps determine story placement in both media.
Reporters have at their disposal several “mojo” – short for mobile journalist – backpacks. Each is stocked with a laptop computer equipped with a cellular phone card; a point-and-shoot digital camera that also can shoot digital; a digital audio recorder and a detachable microphone. Photographers are being trained to shoot and edit video; I spent a large chunk of this morning watching photographer/videographer Alan Leon edit a piece about a man with brain cancer.
It’s one thing to know and understand that these kinds of changes are occurring in journalism. It’s quite another to spend time in a newsroom where it’s happening. Compare it to the difference between studying a foreign language and spending time in the country where it’s spoken.
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for advisers to regularly spend a day or two in an online-oriented newsroom. I once did this yearly exercise simply to keep my skills sharp. By the end of the two weeks I’d feel pretty confident that my reporting and editing skills weren’t wasting away. After the past two days, I realize I now have to do it or risk falling hopelessly behind the relevancy curve.
I plan to visit a couple of other, similar newsrooms this summer. It’s not so much about the reporting and editing. Those I can still do. And it’s not about trying to learn the latest video-editing software. That might only depress me. It’s about knowing the newsroom culture my students will step into once they graduate. Not just knowing about it. Knowing it. Only then can I help prepare them for it.
June 7th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Thanks for the info, Jim. I had the same experience this spring at the Roanoke Times. The mojo packs are definitely something we should be aiming for, as well.
June 9th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
The phrase “get me something for online” is more common place in my newsroom even than “hold it to 12 inches.” Though already its relevency is fading: The editor really doesn’t have to tell the reporters he wants something for online. We already know. So, when we come back from an event/meeting/scene, we write a brief and tell editor that “I just moved the fire/meeting/whatever for online.” We know when we arrive on the scene, we should call back immediately with something to get up on the Web, and every time we get something new we should call back in with an update.
We break news online first — always. We never hold back. It isn’t about whether TV can get the scoop from us. Let them chase it. As our editor frequently looks at us and says when they have the same story we do: “We can do better.” It’s about being the go-to place for the news in this community. We’ll turn it around into a second-day story for print, but we’ll post and update it a half-dozen times as warranted during the day before any of our print subscribers see it on their front porch.
Our readers notice and respond, at least half of our most-read stories each day are breaking news items (all of our updates fall under the ‘breaking news’ heading). Take this for instance:
Earlier this week, the state dept. of education sent out data revealing how local schools and corporations fared in rankings based on our state tests. I got the information around 5 p.m. Tuesday, embargoed for release at 11 a.m. the next day. I was working the night shift Wednesday, so I quickly analyzed the data and wrote the basic news story before leaving Tuesday night. We posted it online at 11:01 a.m. Wednesday and had several comments before I even arrived at work.
That night, at the school board meeting I was covering, the superintendent made an announcement and preceded it with: “This will probably be in the paper tomorrow, but the state today released…” And several of the teachers and parents in the audience commented: “The J&C had it online this morning.” I followed my online story with a print package on local reaction and context.
Nobody told me to do this. It is what we’re expected to do. Yes it’s more work (I ended up writing three stories for print, plus the one that went online that morning, plus packaging the data for a graphic for print and another, more detailed one, for online), and yes it means you’re on constant deadline and your work is never done. But it’s totally worth it to know that your community is relying on you to get the news to them in a timely manner and to still put it in perspective and offer context to help them understand.
June 18th, 2007 at 9:03 am
That’s awesome that you got to experience all of this firsthand, Jim. That online media conference thing a couple of us went to back at the end of April? They talked about all of the things you mentioned and more. It was really, really informative and exciting. It’s going to be interesting to see how we work with it, come August.