After reading through the first 694 posts of the semester, I realized this semester was going to be different. But, I already knew that. It's a different class, and now there's a product to be maintained and revised.
Audrey, who worked her first shift in the newsroom today, said,
In five years the web journalist's job will not only be to tell a story in the best possible way, but to tell that story quickly.
I couldn't agree more. Although, I don't think this will happen in five years. I think it will happen in five minutes.
Now that we have a web site (tv.ku.edu) we have the ability to "publish" news just about any time of day or night. We post teases at 9:30 am, updates at 3, the newscast at 5:30, and, thanks to Natalie Flanzer (our 694 content queen from the fall semester) and Adam Sechrist (a 694-gung-ho-and-rearing-to-go-newbie), we have sports stories posted within hours of the final buzzer.
Audrey, and several others, hit the nail on the head when they expressed (was it horror?) about the turnaround time expected for online news. But this is it, ladies and gentlemen. This really is what online journalism is about. It's about being so damn good, that you can write a story and get it posted in 10 minutes flat, graphics, links and all.
So I got to thinking, what if we created an in-class exercise where students were expected to turnover a slug, headline, tease and story in one hour. Then, what about creating a breaking news scenario, where they had to do it in 30 minutes? After learning how to put together a story and get it online under the gun, wouldn't they do even more with an in-depth project where they are given time to plan?
Working with students in the Multimedia Newsroom and posting stories myself online, I have noticed that sometimes, with the rush and confusion to get a story posted, we sometimes "forget" the oh-so-important basics that make our news print/broadcast/HTML worthy. It doesn't matter where you "publish" the news, in reality, all the same rules should apply.
- You must know what questions to ask
- You must understand how to gather and report the facts
- You must be able to write clearly, precisely, and without spelling mistakes or typos
Then, if you want to be a successful online journalist, you must be able to do all these things on demand. (Oh, and understanding a few lines of code wouldn't hurt either).
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