Last Friday, our Mobile Social Journalism class had a Skype session with Christina Loman, an Ithaca College alumni who is currently working for Syracuse.com .
Christina’s supervisor Katie Kramer was also a part of this Skype session. She discussed how recently, Syracuse.com made a serious transition, as most newspapers have, from print writing first to digital, online and social media first.
Kramer explained that this transition was difficult for a lot of the traditional print reporters, who were used to working all week on a single story or article, to immediately post their stories online to be edited by someone else late.
What I Took Away From it all…
Nowadays, stories are expected to be turned around much quicker than the journalistic world is accustomed to. As a young aspiring journalist, I need to prepare myself to be pushing out stories within hours, as opposed to days.
A frequent discussion that comes up in my various journalism classes is the question of speed vs. accuracy in the digital age. Christina Loman’s response really resonated with me.
I tweeted at her, because it reminded me of something extremely important. The role of the journalistic community is as the 4th estate. We are in place to bring true accurate news and reporting to the public. If we focus too much on being the first one to the hot new lead, we can get sloppy if the proper procedures aren’t in place to vet the news.
I was glad that Syracuse.com withheld these values.
Sunshine Chronicles 