My Aching Back: The Perils of Mobile Journalism

Back in September, I spoke to graduate journalism students at Quinnipiac University. A few years ago I was them, and their professor, Rich Hanley, invited me to campus to chat about what I do today as a Web journalist.

We got onto the subject of “where is your office?” during my chat. “It’s back in my office,” Hanley said of where my office was located. He was referring to my work bag.

Working as a mobile journalist means I need to carry my office with me. That includes a cellular phone, a laptop and large pile of papers (which actually needs to be reviewed and cleaned). But it also includes a great deal of other gear. I have a point-and-shoot camera and audio recorder provided by my employers that comes with me. Add on to it my digital SLR and its associated flash and extra lens because I’m more comfortable shooting most photos with that camera. And now I have a HD video camera, which was a Christmas gift. Even without my own gear it’s a lot to carry every day.

Months of carrying everything in a messenger bag (plus my camera bag for my digital SLR) has put a strain on my back. Some days are better than others. There are many days when I stand up after sitting and have trouble straightening my back. I’ll probably be in a doctor’s office soon enough.

But my work environment isn’t going to change. I’m still need to lug my gear, and I’m not about to cut back on what I use.

God bless my mother, who had been listening to my complaints. My reaction to the camera bag I received with the HD camera: “Oh God, yet another bag to carry.”

The next day I got an early birthday present, a backpack that will fit all of my gear. It’s a Lowepro, which is the same brand as my camera bag for my SLR. All of my camera equipment fits into the bottom of the bag (see photo), and there’s a slot for the laptop and everything else I need to carry. It already feels better for my back, although I haven’t used it for a full day of work yet.

The best part is this bag is mine. It means no matter where I go in the future, this bag will go with me.

I’m interested to hear how other mobile journalists solve this dilemma of how to carry their gear. Leave a comment below if you have suggestions.

Acknowledgements for Hyperlocal Work

It’s always nice to see people are following and acknowledging the good work you do. This time it’s more my company than it is me individually.

First, blogger Christopher Wink compiled a list of hyperlocal sites worth following. Patch made the list.

Second, Mark Gimein at The Big Money on Slate questions why hyperlocal is so terrible. His comments are mainly about the large national aggregating sites such as Topix. But he said Patch is the exception, noting how we have editors working in each of our communities. “Yet for those who think that local news is a viable business as well as a public necessity, Patch may offer the faintest bit of hope for local news,” Gimein wrote.

Getting Blamed for Others’ Mistakes

A recent mistake in a recent Washington Post article and the subsequent correction created a bit of a firestorm for the story’s reporter and writer. The correction of an article about Public Enemy spread quickly across the Internet, and the writer ended up taking the heat.

But it was a case of what happens very often in the news business. Someone other than the by-lined writer on an article made the mistake. The headline is wrong. A copy editor made a mistake. But those people do not have their names on the article.

For example, a copy editor changed 9/11 in a story a colleague wrote at an old job. But when he changed the date, he put Sept. 11, 2002, not Sept. 11, 2001. My colleague was the one who felt like she looked bad. There was a story I wrote about an upcoming public hearing about power lines. The article had the right date, but the headline referenced the wrong date. I fielded phone calls and emails from people wanting to know what was right. I didn’t write the headline, but my name was there so people called me.

The article from the Post’s Ombudsman Blog about the Public Enemy correction states how the newspaper as a whole takes the blame. Not one person is assigned blame. But so often reporters and writers are the ones who are taking the heat for mistakes others make, and this particular story shows how much of a problem it can become in today’s media world on the Internet.

Andrew Alexander further writes how Akeya Dickson, the article’s author, wanted to write a first-person piece about becoming the center of media attention because of the correction. She was denied.

The problem is most people don’t understand the layers of editing and pagination and more editing that happen between the reporter’s desk and when the printed copy lands on the newsstand or on the Web. A reporter files a story with an editor. The editor does one review of the story. When that editor approves the story, a copy editor reviews and edits the story. Sometimes paginators then review the story a third time before placing it on the page, especially since they need to write a headline for the story. That’s a lot of places a mistake can be made.

In today’s age on the Internet and the scrutiny people give their news and the mistakes we journalists can make, it’s ever important to be transparent about the decisions we make. It’s also important to be transparent about how we make mistakes when we apologize for them. It’s not so much because someone needs to be blamed, but because of how someone can be discredited in their work. If someone does not appear to be authoritative on a subject, sources may not speak to them or readers may not read.

The fact that I am the one who edits and posts the articles on M-SH Patch, most often my own stories, it’s easy for me to be transparent when I screw something up. I post an editor’s note. I post a comment. I talk to readers about it. Because I’m in the community, it’s easy to talk about our mistakes, although they are few. Most often they are perceived mistakes, in fact, and more of an issue of “what I said is not what I meant.”

I had a funny conversation, though, about an article that had an error. A freelancer had covered a meeting and inaccurately reported something. The business administrator, who rarely comments on anything we publish, called me at least a week later. He was concerned because of the things he was hearing at Town Hall (the information in question had to do with salaries). “Oh I didn’t cover that meeting,” I said to him. “That’s what happened,” he said, referring to how my work is normally accurate. We hashed out the correction over the phone and I posted it. Problem solved.

Journalism Is Evolving, Not Dying

It’s the same story from another publication. The same “journalism is dying” or “journalism needs to be saved” story that pops up, it seems like, once per week.

But it seems these people who keep writing these all-too-early obituaries on the profession don’t seem to understand it or, at the very least, its history.

Journalism doesn’t need to be saved. Nor is it dying. Journalism is evolving. It’s alive in well. It’s just not in the way some people envisioned it to ever be. We’ve come into an age where the printing press is not held by a few people. A few rich people. We’re in a time where everyone can be a publisher and can be a reporter.

Not everyone who has one of those printing presses is a trained journalist and has a fancy diploma with journalism written across it (like me). It doesn’t mean those people are any less than I. Sometimes their work is on equal footing. In fact, one of the biggest stories I’ve covered in my career came from a citizen journalism report.

Yes, that is going to be scary. And it also means there will be bumps along the way. And that’s why news literacy is so important today. It’s important to measure where you’re getting your news, how its sourced and if there could be any ax to grind. Sure, every person — journalist or not — has biases. What separates is the ability to set aside those biases and get the whole story. The reader needs to measure all of their news sources rather than taking everything on face value.

Plus we are in the age of electronic news, as less people want their news on a piece of paper. That doesn’t mean print is dying. The printed word will always be the cornerstone of journalism. It’s just in a different medium. It doesn’t mean the journalism produced on the Internet is anything less than what is printed and stacked onto newstands each day.

How can any of it be bad for journalism? And how does having so many different voices covering something be a negative? Remember the days when there were several newspapers covering a community? It meant no stone was left unturned for those readers in their news coverage.

If you look back at history of journalism, there have been plenty of times there was massive change and turbulence. Just look 100 years ago during the days of the muckrakers and yellow journalism. How is what happened then any different than today? And somehow journalism survived it all.

Right now journalism is in an age where everyone is trying to figure out what it’s going to be. It’s not an age of death or needing to be saved. It needs to evolve and push forward. We should be asking how we can evolve journalism rather than save it. We should be excited about the future of journalism, and I am, rather than throwing dirt on a perceived grave.

Moving the Newsroom to the Scene of a Fire

We work from the scene of a fire in Millburn, N.J.

I saw the smoke before I officially knew there was a fire, and I just started driving in that direction. For all I knew the fire was in the next town over.

That’s how my coverage started of the Exxon gas station fire in Millburn, N.J. last Thursday. I was at the scene before the flames were extinguished and even shot photos of the flames. If you’re a reporter who has covered a fire (or any other type of breaking news story like this), you know the drill. I called a co-worker, who was on rewrite to get the story out there.

But the similarities of how I covered breaking news at a newspaper and how we do it on the Web ends there.

When I arrived at the scene I took a photo with my phone and posted it on Twitter. The photos I initially posted on Twitter became the first photos we used with the story. But what about the photos I shot on my actual camera? We got those on the site fairly quickly too.

That’s because our news operations moved onto a patch of grass across the street from the fire. Heather Collura, the Summit editor, who was assisting me, came to the scene with her laptop and aircard. It was our mobile newsroom. I would shoot photos and then hand her the camera. She’d upload the photos. I would get new information and bring it to her to add to the story.

While most of the other reporters who were covering the story, and there were a lot of them, had to go back to their offices to file photos and, in some cases, write the story, we were filing from the scene. In fact, as some news outlets were reporting the initial facts about the fire, we had moved on to report that the fire was deemed an accident.

And that’s not to mention the user contributions. In the first moments I was at the scene, I was approached by a reader who had shot video on his cell phone. He wanted to send it to us. He later uploaded it to the story. The folks from the local Red Cross chapter uploaded photos. The police chief sent me a photo. We had more photos and video than any other place I looked online.

Locals thought of us first for this story, too, based on the phone calls and the emails. I received several phone calls on the way to the scene from people to report the fire. I got a few more at the scene. I got some emails from people alerting me to the fire.

I didn’t let the story die the day after, of course. I was back at the scene the next day to cover the demolition and proved it always pays off to go back. While I was there, the owner of the car at the center of the fire told me his experiences with the fire. I could have just called the fire department for an update (or, more likely with me, gone there), but I made sure I stopped the scene. And it paid off for me.

But isn’t that how covering local news should always work?

Once You Go Web, You Never Go Back

Like he does after every big game, my sports editor called me Tuesday evening to let me know the score. Why does he call? So I can then post the score on Twitter and Facebook before he has a chance to finish the article and I can edit and post it.

It’s just an example of how the Web has changed how we, two former newspaper reporters, have changed our game.

But the same conversation led to us both saying, “I don’t know how I could ever go back to a newspaper.” We were talking about “writing long.”

In the days of newspapers, we wrote stories to fit a news hole. At the daily newspaper where I worked, that typically meant 18 inches. It meant there were plenty of times I cut things from a story so it would fit the space. There was also plenty of negotiating with editors to get more space on more important stories (of course, I have worked with some reporters who would negotiate for more space on every story).

For every story I’ve written for the Web in the last four years (I can’t believe I’ve been a Web journalist that long), it’s been until it’s complete. It didn’t matter if it was long or it was short, I wrote until it was done. I never needed to worry about space. Plus, I always know I can go back later and add more information if needed. Write-throughs are not uncommon for me.

How could I ever go back to a newspaper in a world where I have space and editing freedoms? Not to mention all of the other wonderful gifts the Web has brought us, most importantly interacting with readers. They can’t talk back to a newspaper like they can with a Web article.

And the realization comes at a time when the future looks extremely bleak for newspapers.

The Wall Street Journal had a story Wednesday basically saying newspapers are screwed. The story states newspaper executives are running out of things to cut and future cuts are going to be more hurtful. At the same time, ad revenue continues to drop. The drops aren’t as significant as earlier this year, according to the article, but there are still no signs of recovery.

As someone who started at newspapers and spent the first six years of her career working for them, it saddens me. But it’s been obvious for years newspapers were heading to this point. The economic crisis just made it worse by speeding up the process.

The problem is people keep saying, “we need to save newspapers” or “print is dying.”

The printed word will never go away. It will always be the driving force behind much of the news. I know plenty of people who get their news mainly online and don’t want to watch a video. They want to read the news. It means newspapers won’t die. It just means they’ll be in a different medium.

And it’s why newspaper executives need to think differently about how they present the news and create an appropriate business model. It can’t be reactionary like a pay wall (a model that could doom some news outlets as people go to other places to find the news). It’s got to be an evolution rather than a “we need to save journalism” model.

And perhaps in the future so many other people will be like my sports editor and me and saying they can’t imagine ever writing for a newspaper again.

What I’ve Learned About Twitter

Thursday night I did something I’ve never done in my career before. I lost a reporters notebook.

I covered a fashion show that night, and it must have fallen out of my camera bag while I ran around shooting photos and video. The worst part is I didn’t realize it was gone until Friday morning. No chance to check all the places I went that night in the banquet hall. I made calls, but no one had seen it.

But I also did something I never dreamed 10 years ago I’d be doing today. I tweeted about it.

The Patch Web sites, including my own in Millburn-Short Hills, has a spot in the top left where our latest tweet appears on the page (you can see it at right). It’s changed how I approach my game as a journalist because it’s a new tool that has given me a new way to report the news.

On Friday, I mentioned how I lost my notebook and put a call out to anyone who might have seen it. I posted my phone number for anyone to contact me if they had seen it. No one called to say they saw my notebook (it’s gone, never to be seen again), but the reaction was interesting. People asked me about it on the street. I got several @replies wishing me luck in finding it or would let me know if they heard anything. It even spilled over onto my work-related Facebook page when I posted something there. My lost notebook became a topic of conversation.

And the tweet was only on our homepage for about 30 minutes.

Twitter is certainly a conversation starter for me because of how we use it, and it’s not just conversations on the Internet. It’s conversations I have in coffeeshops, at the events I attend or even on the phone. I got a phone call last week in response to a tweet about a school board meeting.

Posting something about an upcoming event is fine, but if you want to have those conversations you need to do more than post how the Township Committee meets tonight or the boys soccer team plays Friday. You need to post your observations. What are you seeing on the streets right now?

It’s also a fantastic way to report breaking news, especially with how the feed is placed on our homepage.

Recently, there was a tragic car accident in the South Mountain section of town. The 19-year-old passenger in the car died from his injuries a day later. But the night of the accident–a Sunday, which is supposed to be my day off–I was sitting at home in my pajamas.

Maybe I should have driven the 30 minutes to the scene, but I didn’t. I knew I wouldn’t get official news that night from the police or the fire department (they were all at the scene and the public information officer doesn’t work Sunday nights).

But I didn’t need to go to the scene because I had neighbors calling me, e-mailing me and, most importantly, tweeting me. We didn’t have an official story Sunday night (I had something at 8:30 a.m. Monday), but I was able to post news from neighbors who watched the scene unfold via Twitter. It fed right into the site. And it was citizen journalism at its best.

I’ll post live updates from government meetings or important events I attend. I post photos, which get quite a number of views, from events, like the Halloween parade Saturday night. Again, it feeds straight into our site long before I can sit down and write a full story.

And the citizen journalism, crowd sourcing opportunities are fantastic. After a severe thunderstorm brought hail in July, I asked for photos. I not only received photos, but I also received a link to a YouTube video. Friday, I asked for photos from the school Halloween parades. I received several. I don’t always get a response, but more times than not I receive something.

In a job where I have no office, it’s also a good tool to tell people where I am. People have shown up places because they need to talk to me. “I saw your tweet and decided I needed to track you down.”

I’ve become a disciple of UberTwitter because it allows me to do the things necessary for my job. I can post photos. I can post a link to my “location” (usually only good for 1150 meters since the map is generated by a cell tower).

I’ve also learned not to worry about my number of followers, which is something I see so many people lament on Twitter. Your following will grow over time. It’s never by leaps and bounds at first, but it does grow. There are days I pick up 10 followers. There are days no one follows me. And there are still other days when the only followers I pick up are spambots. But I know what I tweet gets to a larger audience because of how we use Twitter on our site. But in the end, if people want to read, they will. If not, oh well?

And at the same time, I’ve also learned to be selective in who I follow too. There are people I find productive to follow and like reading nearly everything they post. I may learn something or I laugh. Or I can get a news tip out of what they post. But if I followed everyone who followed me, I would have too many people cramming my feed. I eventually may follow someone back if we start to converse via Twitter.

Of course, when you’re starting you need to pick people to follow in order to build a little bit of a following (I will look for people from Millburn-Short Hills tweeting and follow them in hopes they’ll follow me back or at least learn about Patch). But when you’re following over 100 people, you need to start being selective.

And even if you’re selective, you need to know you’ll never keep up with the conversation. I look back a little bit. But if I looked back at every tweet since I last logged on, all I would be doing is reading back and wouldn’t be able to take part in the active conversation. Twitter is about what’s happening now, which is something I can relate to as the editor of a community news Web site.

There’s still much to learn, though, like what should I do with the lists feature. I created a list on my work account of Patch people (it’s not complete yet). I don’t know how useful it is, especially since no one has followed it yet. And I’m sure there will be more to learn in the future.

A Real Local News Throwdown

We’ve gotten a lot of attention here in New Jersey with the number of “hyperlocal news” Web sites popping up, which includes Patch. Case in point, the Star-Ledger ran an article about phenomenon on Sunday (not sure how I feel about that photo of me).

But there was news in a different area of the country about a new local news competition that could be more interesting than anything happening here in New Jersey.

The owner of Politico is planning a local news Web site that will cover Washington, D.C. It’s another challenge to the Washington Post, and will be interesting since former Washingtonpost.com Editor Jim Brady will be heading the project.

Of any challenge to local news on the east coast, this will be the most interesting one. Brady is considered by many a leader in online news because he made the Post’s Web site what it is. Many consider WashingtonPost.com to be one of the best newspaper Web sites. It could be a war with the Post, especially as they go through their much-publicized growing pains of combining the Web and print staffs. The timing seems to be right for an online local news entry into Washington.

Blinded in the Media Spotlight

I’ve never thought the work a reporter does is all that interesting, especially to other reporters. It can be pretty mundane. But apparently daily reporting is fascinating.

Recently I was one of the reporters featured in a Newsweek article about Patch (I also wrote a post about it recently). For the article, the Newsweek reporter followed me around for part of my day, which included a trip to the Millburn Fire Department and Town Hall.

The Star-Ledger is now writing their own article about “hyperlocal journalism” (a term I hate), and I had yet another reporter following me around for a portion of my day. That day featured a trip to the chamber of commerce, the historical society and the fire department. The story is slated to run in the Star-Ledger (and on NJ.com) on Oct. 25.

I’m not going to deny I like the attention, but it’s a little odd to have someone shadowing you, asking people about you and the work you do. Is beat journalism that much of a lost art that it’s news when someone does it? And does it well? And why do reporters need to follow me around to know what we do every day. Haven’t you done this yourself?

More over, imagine someone following you around for a day, watching you do your job and then asking the people you interact with about how you perform your job while you’re sitting or standing there. It’s a little unnerving, especially when you don’t know the reporter and how they will represent you.

The other issue is I’m forced to move backwards than forward on stories I’ve covered. I’m asked about our hazing coverage, which is something that happened weeks ago. I’ve been asked about other big stories I’ve covered, which is hard to remember sometimes.

When I was in graduate school at Quinnipiac, I remember a conversation I had with Rich Hanley, who oversees the journalism graduate program there. He said most daily reporters (and that’s what online journalists like myself really are) report and write a story and then are looking for the next story.

A story I wrote and published two days ago (or even hours ago) is out of my mind because I’ve moved onto the next thing. How is that story moving forward? What’s the next phase? What else are people talking about? And because of the latter, I know when it’s time to move on from a story. That’s part of what community journalism is. So it’s hard to go back to a story when everyone, including myself, has moved on from it.

The experience has really shown me the other side of reporting. I know how my sources feel like when I’m asking them questions. I know what they’re thinking when they see the final product. And I’m now familiar with the feeling that happens between interview and the article’s publication. I had a conversation with the Millburn township administrator about it, who was quoted in the Newsweek article. I commented how there were some exaggerations in the Newsweek article (I don’t go to every car crash although I know about most if not all of them, and the fire chief didn’t show up at all of them). “Ohhhhh,” he smirked. “Now you know how we all feel.”

But, overall, it’s been a whirlwind, wonderful experience. People are popping up all over to congratulate me. I’ve received fan mail. It’s been an overly positive experience so far. Let’s hope I’m part of a trend to focus more on community news that continues to grow.

Support a Charity I Care About

I logged into WordPress today and decided to see if there were any new widgets to add to my sidebar, and you’ll notice some changes.

I’ve added Twitter updates from both of my accounts (one is my personal account and the other is for work), but more importantly there is now a SocialVibe widget.

I’m one of those people who thinks we should give back as a response to the many blessings in our lives. There are so many people out there who are not nearly as fortunate as we can be. And over the course of my career as a journalist, I’ve had the chance to work with some great charities. One of them is the American Red Cross.

I’m always impressed with the work they do in the wake of tragedy, providing people food and shelter during a time of need. And they’re constantly educating people about important safety issues and training them to be prepared, like CPR.

So take a moment and click on the widget and do the short activity. You’ll be helping people trying to recover from tragedy with just a few clicks of the mouse.