Analysis - by Patrick Thornton on Tuesday, September 9, 2008 9:32 - 1 Comment
Stelter combines old and new media at Times
Brian Stelter has been blogging and pushing the new media envelope much longer than he has been working at a mainstream publication, but now be combines new media with old to cover his beat.
Before coming to The New York Times, Stelter founded and ran the popular and influential TV news blog TV Newser. Now that he works for one of the most storied news organizations in the world, Stelter finds himself managing a beat offline and online.
At the center of his beat is TV Decoder, a blog about what’s on TV, who is watching what’s on TV and why it matters. But Stelter finds himself spending more than half of his time working for print. How does he balance the two and how do they work together?
He said his blog is a way to pitch stories for the paper, and to report out stories for the paper. He can write a short post for his blog and gauge the reaction. He can also spend days, weeks or even months reporting little tidbits before he puts it all together into a large story for print.
Stelter has never known a non-wired world of journalism. He can’t imagine not be able to use tools like his blog, Twitter or other social networks to help get instant feedback from readers. He really values the connectedness and feedback he gets from being wired.
Part of being connected goes beyond getting feedback from users. People like to help and contribute. Stelter said it makes people feel more connected to him as a person, because he is no longer just a byline in a paper, but a real person that they can interact with.
People can interact with Stelter in a myriad of ways. They can post comments on his blog, and he responds to some of those comments, or they can talk to him on Twitter or be his friend on Facebook. Stelter doesn’t use social networking at the core of his beat like many beat bloggers do, but rather he uses social networking to allow him to be more connected to his beat.
He hasn’t found Facebook to be that helpful of a resource, but he does use it as a directory for contacts. Many of his sources, PR contacts and others are on Facebook. Facebook does give his readers and easy way to contact him, but he hasn’t found any meaningful public discourse through Facebook.
He has used Twitter mostly as a venue to get instant feedback from users. During the open ceremony of the Olympics he used search.twitter.com to see what people were saying about NBC by just typing in “NBC.” He found a lot of people were upset with NBC for delaying the open ceremony 12 hours.
“It wound up on the front page of the Times the next day,” he said. “A few years ago that simply wouldn’t have been possible. I don’t think it would have been possible to measure the reaction.”
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This is a great example. I wonder though, how those reporters who are still working for editors who do not understand or embrace the concept of multiple platforms and the benefits of social media are ever going to be able to do some of this. Those are the people I worry about. I care deeply about this industry and the slow adoption is deadly. The obstacles that would-be innovative reporters are faced with are often insurmountable.