February 14th, 2008
At last count, we had posted 38 photos in our gallery, seven videos and dozens of news updates. That’s how we start telling stories these days: Web first. It would be easy if that’s all we did, but we have tomorrow’s newspaper as well. So as reporters, photographers and videographers are filing from the NIU campus, writers, editors and producers in the News Tower are taking that information and turning it around for posting to the Web and tomorrow’s newspaper. What used to be a simple, straight “assembly line” has morphed into a “Slinky,” where news goes on the first available “platform.” Tonight that was the Web. We’ll recraft the Web for print tomorrow, and push the print back to the Web and keep going.
Some folks think that approach is new. For those of us who have been in the business three or four decades, we know differently. We used to publish two editions a day, sometimes multiple ones, write for radio and television, and send updates to AP and UPI all day. It’s only been in the past 20 years or so that we limited ourselves to one newspaper each morning. I’m glad we can tell stories this way. We’re learning a lot.
P.S. Thanks to those who are reading online tonight. It’s nice to know you’re out there — even the unhappy ones. Godspeed and good night.
February 14th, 2008
It’s 7:06 p.m. and I am sitting at my desk listening to the journalists in the News Tower cover the shooting at Northern Illinois University. Is it one dead, or four? Eighteen injured or 17? The challenge is nailing down facts and resisting the temptation to repeat what we just heard from a caller, an e-mailer or another news outlet. In the rush to push information to the Web, to parents, students and people around the world, it would be so easy just to “go with it.” We can’t. That’s simply not what we do. We gather the information, sort it and stake our credibility on what we post and what we print. There’s lots of information out there. Our job is to sort the facts from the speculations.
Over the next several days, this is what you can expect from the Rockford Register Star and rrstar.com: full, 24-7 coverage on the Web. We have reassigned our journalists to ensure they are in DeKalb fulltime, reporting and posting photos and videos around the clock. No matter what time you come to rrstar.com, you should expect to find updated information. In the daily newspaper, we will cover the news, provide more context and help readers understand what happened. In Sunday’s newspaper, we will recap the three days on campus with a multi-page special section.
Rrstar.com will break the news, provide the links and ensure deeper, broader coverage as fast we we can and with our commitment to credible, important, factual information. In print, we will add the context to help us all understand what cannot be understood.
This is our job.
February 14th, 2008
Charles Apple is a well-known designer in the media business. He writes a blog about visual editing, and he recently “interviewed” top Register Star newsroom boss, Linda Grist Cunningham.
