Page 87 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

Changing Attitudes to Fit the Web

no one will ever hear them. Still, their collective voice is so powerful
that it is forcing professional editors and producers to sit up and take
note.
That collective power is the result of the Web’s interactive nature.
Bloggers don’t write in a vacuum. They write about each other and link
to each other’s sites. They post comments directly to blogs they read,
and they use all sorts of these electronic ties to coordinate their efforts
to draw attention to issues they deem important. Bloggers are having
an electronic discussion of the news on their own terms, without the
interference of big media companies.
They are also out there talking about the rest of life, too. This is
where bloggers become a useful tool for journalists trying to under-
stand a story that they know little about. The first thread in a story
dealing with a subculture—say, the world of indie music or the life of
staffers on Capitol Hill—could be a blog, with its free-form language
and devil-may-care attitude. Finding the right blog can take a journalist
to the heart of a subject that he or she had previously only been able
to observe from the outside.
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Changing Attitudes to Fit the Web

Dedicated Web writers are a curious breed. They do most of their
reporting by phone and through research on the Web. They often
serve as rewrite specialists, and they rarely leave the newsroom. The
reason for this is that most news organizations are working to adapt
their old-media structures to the Web, rather than redesign them from
scratch. Because of this, the Web writer serves as a patch between the
old media and its Web site. If the work being turned out by the paper
or TV reporter can’t go straight to the Web, the Web writer stands
ready to update the story or hammer it into a usable form.
Web writers often end up acting as writers, rewriters, editors, and
content producers all on the same shift. They work off of wire copy,
from notes sent in by reporters, and from research done on their own.
A Web writer is the Dr. Frankenstein of the news business, building
something special out of whatever pieces are available.
On the other end are the reporters in the field who are being forced
to confront the Web in their approach to the job. The deadline is
not the one set for the morning paper or the evening broadcast. The
deadline is now. Reporters used to putting whole stories together at
once for deadline are having to learn to dribble breaking stories out in