Reading some of last week’s end-of-the-decade lists made me think about how much has changed about the way we do business.
I’m sure staffers in our newsroom would agree. It’s been exciting. And exhausting.
Influenced mainly by advancing technology – and for the past few years a declining economy – we are committing journalism in ways I never imagined when I joined the TNT staff in 2000. Here’s my Top 10 list for how newsgathering has changed in the past decade at The News Tribune.
1. The 24-hour news cycle. Ten years ago, we had one newspaper deadline and an automated system that fed our Web site once a day. Now readers expect to call up thenewstribune.com and immediately learn about the latest traffic pileup, city council vote or football score. The newsroom that was dark from 11 p.m. to 9 a.m. is staffed and posting news almost around the clock.
2. Remote filing of stories and photos. A decade ago, news gatherers were chained to the newsroom. They left to take pictures and interview people, but had to return to process pictures and file stories. Nowadays, using mainly laptop computers with wireless Internet cards, reporters and photographers can file content remotely and we can get it to readers more quickly.
3. Many platforms to feed. Beyond the newspaper and the Web site, we host about 20 blogs. After launching Seahawks Insider as a way to broadcast updates from the 2005 NFL draft, we learned the power and popularity of this new medium. Our top blogs now attract hundreds of thousands of viewers each month, and we’ve added blogs for local politics, crime news, local restaurants and others. They require feeding at least daily, sometimes dozens of times a day. We’re also publishing to Facebook, Twitter and mobile phone applications.
4. New job titles, duties. Mojos, or mobile journalists, now rove the community taking pictures, interviewing people and blogging. Home page editors decide how stories play on the Web site in the same way print editors pick stories for the front page. Ten years ago, only one or two staffers knew how to publish online. Now almost everyone in our newsroom posts or edits content online.
5. Digital photography. Photojournalism may have changed the most. Our in-house photo lab is now a storage closet for water cooler jugs. The light table where we inspected negatives is simply something to lean against as we watch photographers editing on a computer screen. Photographers learned to shoot and produce videos and create online photo galleries. They started their own blog. They learned to transmit from the field.
6. Two-way conversation with readers. Aside from letters to the editor, journalism a decade ago was a one-way conversation. We wrote. You read. Readers today expect to comment on stories and do so by the thousands. They chat with reporters on our blogs. They post photographs and calendar items that we edit and re-publish.
7. Tighter resources. Unfortunately, as our jobs expanded over the past decade (see Nos. 1-6 above), we lost staff and other resources to an ever-tougher economy. We have prioritized and reprioritized, focusing our reporters and our front page on stories that only we can write about our community. We supplement those with stories from wire services and other sources. And like other news organizations, including television, we have had to stop providing some content.
8. News partnerships. Unheard of 10 years ago, we now share news tips and stories with selected partners, such as KIRO-TV, as a way to extend our coverage. We work even more closely with our sister paper, The Olympian, coordinating coverage among our reporters. We swap stories with papers elsewhere in the state, although on high-profile beats, such as state politics and major league sports, we think media competition breeds better journalism.
9. Emphasizing credibility. The News Tribune always has worked to be a credible news source, to abide by the ethics of professional journalism, which include verifying facts, remaining free from conflicts of interest and representing more than one side of an issue. In the past 10 years, our professional credibility has become key to differentiating us from the plethora of people simply posting their observations and opinions online.
10. Learning to change. To keep up with the pace of change, we have had to temper our perfectionist tendencies. Instead of spending months fine-tuning every small change, we prefer to launch “pilot projects.” When we decided to start producing videos, for instance, we simply bought a camera and asked our photographers to experiment with it. Sometimes they brought back usable videos; sometimes they didn’t. Some of our blogs flourished; others tanked. But we learned and perfected in the process. We still strive for quality, but we try not to let our fear of failure prevent us from trying something new.
Karen Peterson: 253-597-8434
karen.peterson@thenewstribune.com
JOIN THE DISCUSSION | Register here
We welcome comments. Please keep them civil, short and to the point. ALL CAPS, spam, obscene, profane, abusive and off topic comments will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be blocked. Thanks for taking part — and abiding by these simple rules. A thorough explanation of rules of conduct can be found in our Terms of Service. If you have any questions, including why your comment may not be showing immediately after you submit it, be sure to visit the commenting FAQ.