Reuters blogger Felix Salmon has an interesting take on Digital Journalism. He says

Digital journalism isn’t really about writing, any more — not in the manner that freelance print journalists understand it, anyway. Instead, it’s more about reading, and aggregating, and working in teams; doing all the work that used to happen in old print-magazine offices, but doing it on a vastly compressed timescale.

Graham Holliday, a social media trainer and consultant, says the same thing: freelance journalists in the digital age have to get used to more than just reporting and writing good stories. Graham says that skills like curation have become vital.

Digital is not the new Print. It’s about a whole lot more that is still not very well understood. And it’s new. Totally new.

Read more about Felix Salmon’s take on Digital Journalism at this LINK

One of the first times I interviewed someone, I sat down in an empty classroom in the middle of the California desert. The source I was interviewing was an ex-marine. He was anxious and rough around the edges and had a voice that sounded like steel grinding on cement. He talked fast too. Bullet fast.

When I asked him if he’d mind whether or not I record the interview, he said, “You better record this. You don’t know shorthand, do you?”

I recorded the interview.

Reuters publishes an excellent handbook for ethics and guidelines on the matter of developing sources called The Essentials of Reuters Sourcing. Here’s what they say about recording information:

Record the information a source gives you, either by taking notes or by printing out a hard copy of notes made on a computer, or by tape recording conversations. Reporters are encouraged to learn shorthand. Reporters should keep notes, tapes, video or other information for at least two years. Remember that it may be necessary to for you to prove the accuracy and fairness of your story in court.

If using a tape recorder, obtain the source’s permission; undisclosed taping can be illegal in some jurisdictions. If conducting an interview by phone with a broker or analyst, remember that most banks, funds, or brokerage houses routinely record incoming phone calls. Sources can check the accuracy of their quotes by replaying in-house tapes.

If you interview a source over the telephone and are writing the quotes directly onto a screen, save the results and make a printout. You should not write the story directly from the screen onto which you wrote the quotes but instead work from a copy. Otherwise you destroy evidence that could be crucial to you in a lawsuit.

Whether a telephone interview, a face-to-face where I use shorthand, or pulling bits background off the web, I follow Reuters’ rules like religion and document everything. Leave no holes.

Read more about good sourcing at the following LINK

Here’s an early profile piece I did on the ex-marine LINK

Credit: Wesley Tomaselli

January, 2013 MEDELLÍN – Only now do I realize the value of being part of a newsroom. It’s critical. To tell a story well, first you’ve got to know whether or not to tell it, when to tell it, and how to tell it. This is a process. What I learned right away during my first week in the Colombia Reports newsroom is that it is a fiercely social process at best. And you’ve got to be rigid with yourself.

I was assigned a story on the Hay Festival – a literature and arts festival with Welsh origins that happens once every year in Cartagena, Colombia’s Caribbean port city. It’s important. But we had already written a piece on it earlier.

So the first question was whether or not to write the story. I went to Adriaan and asked him how relevant Hay is to our readers. “It’s a huge deal,” he said. “Write it.”

Solved. With efficiency.

The second question was when to publish the story? That was a harder question to answer. We decided to publish it on a Sunday, considering most interested readers would set aside time for an article on literature and arts during a Sunday morning over coffee rather than in the midst of week day chaos. We shot for Sunday.

The third question, though, was what’s the angle? Like I said, we’d already published a piece on Hay. So we needed a fresh angle. I went to Adriaan again. “Get an interview with the Director,” he said. “Ask her why Colombia and not another Latin American city. See what she has to say. If she says something interesting, we’ll publish.”

This is the painstaking process with every article. It’s fiercely social. And it’s got to happen fast.

Now that I report solo from my desk in Bogotá, the newsroom is still present – virtually, but the effect is not as strong. What I realized is that being in a newsroom surrounded by your peer reporters makes sharpening an article more efficient than ever.

You can kill an article with a quick question across the desk to find out whether or not there’s a conflicting story already written. Or you can get a quick run-down on the history of a beat that someone else has covered but you haven’t. You can get ideas on angles from the newsroom in a flash. And the pressure, of course, is on. The virtual equivalent works, but it doesn’t cut it like the real deal.

I learned that you’ve got to be extremely rigid with yourself before writing an article. And a strong skepticism with questions like Do my readers really want to read this? is probably the hardest question to answer well and quickly when you’re starting out.

Then again, I realized that once you confirm an article, you have to be bold. You have to get a source as fast as possible. Picking up the phone with immediacy is easier now. It wasn’t then.

Finally I got a hold of the director of Hay via a skype call. She was in London at the time. Then I boldly faced a 30 minute interview in Spanish. Not Colombian Spanish. Catalan Spanish. The Director is from Barcelona. That wasn’t what I expected. Then again, it never is what you expect when you’re a journalist. In fact, I think it’s usually better not to have these silly things – expectations – at all. Better to just be bold, listen, and try to understand your sources. A story will come.

Read the article I wrote on the Hay Festival at this LINK

I’m reading Andy Rooney’s memoir My War these days. It’s good medicine. And what I mean by that is that Andy’s voice is familiar. It’s sharp, stings of dry humor, at times cold, skeptical, and always honest. I think that when you’re isolated from your culture and the voices you used to tell stories and say expressions as you grew up, it’s easy to forget how much they define you.  But Andy’s voice and the way he sifts through anecdotes reminds me of the voices I grew up with. Strong medicine.

Credit: USA Today

Andy Rooney was an Upstate New York boy too. Raised in Albany. Then educated in a small town called Hamilton, just a stone’s throw from where I grew up. You could say that Rooney became a journalist almost by accident when he was yanked out of the army and sent to the old Times office in London. That is where the U.S. Military was setting up a newspaper to report on the war and G.I.s’ stories during World War II. Andy was the youngest, most inexperienced of The Stars and Stripes staff. The war is what made him into a legendary war reporter and a great story teller.

But there were times in those early days when he was not a great reporter. And he knew it. This anecdote about locating a story in a press conference reminds me of my first interviewing experience: not enough skepticism, too much transcription, not enough urgency. It speaks magnitudes.

…Eisenhower spoke for about ten minutes. He began by announcing several appointments to important jobs. I wrote them down. He told us about a new plan for cooperation between the British and the Americans and I wrote it down. He made half a dozen statements that didn’t mean much to me but I made careful notes about everything. Gladwin Hill of the AP asked Eisenhower whether there was any schedule for the invasion of France. Eisenhower was vague and talked all around the question, but toward the end of his answer he said, “Within the year.”

Credit: Tony Pierce

I went back to the office and, almost literally, started to transcribe the notes I’d taken, in the order in which I’d taken them. Before I’d finished, Gladwin Hill’s story came tapping in on the AP wire.

“General Dwight Eisenhower announced today that the Allied invasion of France will take place within the year.”

The story said nothing about new appointments or cooperation with the British. I had taken for granted that the invasion would be within the year, and it hadn’t occurred to me that Eisenhower’s saying so made it a story.

That was the day I learned you don’t report statements made at press conferences in the order in which they were given or in the order of importance assigned to them by the person holding the press conference. I wouldn’t want anyone to think everything went smoothly in my new career as a journalist.

And I don’t want anyone to think it went smoothly as I started out either. Because it didn’t. And from here on out, I know it won’t be all smooth and lovely. Let’s just say that there’s a lot of mud to tromp through. That’s OK though. I grew up playing in the mud.

Check out My War at this LINK