AJR has an overview of the mess in Minneapolis that manages to omit all the fun parts -- juicy details of the Par Ridder soap opera -- and includes this puzzling paragraph:
"One of the paper's local news editors is signing on as a Web reporter. A former local news editor is now in charge of updating breaking news stories for the site. A staff photographer has become the paper's first video reporter."
Ummm... is this supposed to be new? Startribune.com had continuously updated news, staff-produced video and audio a decade ago. We had a formal protocol established for handling breaking news before we began publishing online in the pre-Web, dialup era.
Perhaps the suggestion is that now they're doing it with quality, you know, people from the newsroom.
In our first round of hiring in 1994, we picked off just about every net-literate journalist in the newsroom, people like editors Ben Welter and Dennis Buster. Our outside hires brought in two Pulitzer laureates -- Will Outlaw and Jackie Crosby. We hired Regina McCombs from KARE-TV as a videographer and producer in 1997, and I think we hired Loren Omoto from Minnesota Public Radio about a year later to beef up our ability to turn breaking stories quickly, with quality.
As for engaging with the real newsroom, Brian Peterson's extraordinary photo essay "Testing the Human Spirit" -- sadly, gone from the Web now -- was one of the first major multimedia packages created by any news organization. Combining images, sound, and words from Kurt Chandler and Kimberly Hayes Taylor, it told the story of a rural Minnesota family infected with AIDS, and it's the only thing on the Web that ever made me cry.
So there.
[For those who don't know, I moved from the world of print to the online world on April Fool's Day, 1994, as editor of "Star Tribune Online." It launched in a limited fashion later that year on a proprietary platform called Interchange, and moved to the Web in 1995.]
Comments
Bless you
Most annoying line in an article ever. Thanks for pointing out the errors. Too bad AJR doesn't let you comment directly on their site...
Doomed to repeat history
I saw the same thing in San Antonio -- and others are seeing it from Dallas to Boston and over to San Francisco.
Folks inside the newsroom have suddenly "discovered" the Web, and are heading into it as if they alone are *finally* bringing it credibility.
They weren't paying attention 10 years ago -- or hell, even five years ago or three years ago, so they don't know we were doing some marvelous stuff.
Our years' of journalism awards for both print and Web work somehow are lost in the fog of their inattention.
And because they weren't paying attention, they have no idea that they are re-making some of the same mistakes that we learned from so long ago.
I find it hard to forgive journalists for this -- getting the whole story is Journalism 101.
sigh.