In a clip that accompanies the DVD release of "Citizen Hearst," Houston Chronicle Executive Editor and Executive Vice President Jeff Cohen introduces Sylvia Wood, who was at the time an editor on the Hearst-owned paper's breaking-news "Go Team" (she left the paper in September and now works for the Houston Independent School District). "Our goal every day is to be fast, first and accurate," Wood says in the clip, which was filmed last summer, describing her work:
We look at the TV broadcasts, we look at the TV websites. We're looking at Twitter. Often AP is behind the game when it comes to breaking news; we can get it faster from a lot of other sources. So besides covering the news landscape we're also looking at what kinds of stories people are talking about. We can do a lot of aggregations on buzzy viral topics that are gonna engage readers with the website. So besides the breaking news, we're also looking at, What is it that people want to talk about today? What are they going to click on that they want to talk with their friends about?
The clip is part of a special feature called "The State of News," which looks at just that and features interviews with journalists within and without the Hearst corporation.
Correction: This post originally failed to mention Wood had left the Chronicle since the clip was filmed last year.
User-generated content is rife with risk and opportunity.
The opportunity for it to deliver remarkable images is made clear on an almost-daily basis, be it in the midst of a crisis like the Boston Marathon bombings, Hurricane Sandy, or simply … Read more
Journalists are often warned about the perils of getting emotionally involved with stories and subjects, but when reporting on a tragedy there’s always room to act as a human being first and a reporter second.
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California manhunt subject Christopher Dorner may or may not be dead: Forensics investigators will look at the teeth and make chest X-rays of the charred corpse found in a rental cabin where police say the former Los Angeles police officer holed up and exchanged gunfire with cops.
KPCC didn't comply with the request and posted some bewildered reaction from media outlets and consumers alike. "It's not unusual, particularly in a police standoff, for police to ask television in particular to be very careful in their live coverage," Poynter's Al Tompkins told me in a phone call. "But this idea of Twitter coverage is a new wrinkle."
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When Americans first learn about a breaking news story, 83 percent seek out a second source to get more information, new research says.
Half of them turned to a different type of platform (i.e., heard the news on TV then went online to read more) for follow-up, and of the people who went online, 60 percent turned to a traditional news outlet like The New York Times, CNN or Fox News.
Traditional news outlets beat out Web-native sites like HuffPost, social media and search as the second online source to follow up on big news.
In an interview with the Times, NPPA lawyer Mickey Osterreicher says "the war on terrorism has somehow morphed into an assault on photography," both by the press and the general public.
"Literally every day, someone is being arrested for doing nothing more than taking a photograph in a public place. It makes no sense to me. Photography is an expression of free speech," Osterreicher says.
NYPD has issued guidelines telling officers not to interfere with the press, but Osterreicher said the problem persists.
I believe that the problem is it’s ingrained in the police culture. The idea of serve and protect has somehow changed, for some officers, to include protecting the public from being photographed.
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Cubs President Theo Epstein weighed in Wednesday on the controversy leading up to the trade of popular pitcher Ryan Dempster, saying one factor in the nine-day drama was how quickly news spread through social media.
During a major breaking news story like Friday’s mass killing at a film premiere in Colorado, journalists go hunting for any information they can find. Initially, there’s a big focus on the “who.”
