Lyons: Is there an app for news elves?
There are many facets to the breakneck pace of journalism today that we didn’t deal with years ago.
Technology is neither good nor evil. You can use technology to get people useful information instantly – a text message that your kids’ school has been closed because of weather or a nasty strain of flu. Conversely, a high school student could use technology to humiliate a classmate.
One advance we’ve been experimenting with over the past several months is Twitter. We used it during live court proceedings for the first time this week during Dustin Goy’s involuntary manslaughter trial. For those who don’t know about Twitter, it’s instantaneous messaging in 140 characters or fewer known as tweets.
If you follow the individual or the organization sending the tweet, you get the message on your computer or mobile device. It’s similar to sending a text message to many people at once.
If you use Twitter, you are either an information junkie or a celebrity who believes that the world is fascinated by the minutiae that bounces around inside your skull. Because the latter is devoid of significant thoughts, no more than 140 characters is plenty of space to express them.
We selected the Goy trial to experiment with Twitter because it’s a case that readers have a significant interest in. It’s likely something we’ll try again. It helps when the person sending the tweets is an experienced reporter such as Jillian Duchnowski.
Our news philosophy is to be as instant as possible, which can be demanding, particularly when we’re chasing several developing stories at once. That leads me to my next point about instant communication in mass media.
In the old days, which were about five years ago, we wrote our stories over the day and tried to improve them. You filed the most complete, accurate and fair story possible by evening deadline.
We haven’t abandoned fairness and accuracy standards, but in today’s environment, we often publish online with the information we have, before we have entire stories. I’m often puzzled at the people commenting online on why we have only part of a story when either the incident happened moments ago or the initial information was just released.
Reporting reliable information often takes time. It seems some believe that omniscient elves pop from tree stumps each day, tell us the news, and dutifully answer each of the dozens of questions we ask. Trust me on this if on nothing else, it’s a little more complicated than that.
The idea is to give you what we know and can verify immediately and fill in the rest as the day goes on. Just because technology has gotten faster doesn’t mean the news-gathering process has gotten that much easier.
• Kevin Lyons is news editor of the Northwest Herald. Reach him at 815-526-4505 or e-mail him at kelyons@nwherald.com.
