Hey everyone! It’s Claire Desmarais, the 2019-2020 editor-in-chief for The Beacon. Last week, I went to the Online News Association conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, with Maddie, our news and managing editor, and Annika, our multimedia editor. We spent the week attending lots of sessions related to journalism and online news, which has definitely given us some better insight into how we can improve our work here at The Beacon. Here’s a breakdown of what I learned in the different sessions and ways to improve our content at The Beacon.
Building Trust: Newsroom Tools for the “Fake News” Era (Panel)
This was the first session I went to on Thursday, and one of the more important sessions as well. With so man accusations of fake news today, building trust with your audience has never been more important. Journalists have a responsibility to create and maintain trust with our audience so we can effectively communicate the information we’ve gathered. Trust is what creates sustainable news organizations, and without it, there is no news organization. Some of the panelists talked about how journalism is imperative to democracy, but if journalists don’t maintain their credibility and trust, then they can cause more harm than good. But to break it down, we need to define trust. Trust is about building a relationship with our readers to serve the overall public good. It requires proactive listening, reliability, consistency, and an emotional connection. It’s a difficult process to build trust but we need to prioritize it and continue to ask questions and provide explanations so we can change people’s attitudes and enhance their overall media literacy.
Essentially, we have to get it right. If we don’t maintain accuracy, then trust cannot be built.
Audience Metrics/Development
Another session I attended was in the form of discussion groups. For the first 45 minutes, I was at a table talking about how to create an effective social media campaign and some examples of successful campaigns. Some examples included doing live streams on Instagram and Facebook, conducting Twitter polls, using Instagram story videos, and using Instagram stories to TELL a story. With the increase in social media usage, developing effective campaigns for news organizations has never been more important. The social platforms allow for a new way to communicate messages in a different type of medium other than on a website or in a printed newspaper or magazine. With social, we can curate more organic conversations around certain topics. It also allows for the audience so see behind the scenes of the organization through the use of images.
Breaking News
Breaking news is something that happens in the blink of an eye. Whether it’s an accident, fire, flood, shooting, or something else, there are specific steps in place that journalists need to know to make sure they approach the situation correctly.
- Slow down
- Check each other’s steps
- Independently confirm information
- Allow the story to continue developing
- Correct mistakes
- Admit what you don’t know
These six ideas help journalists asses the situation at hand and make sure that nothing is rushed and reported on inaccurately. This is extremely important because, during breaking news stories, there can be a lot of misinformation and ethical issues surrounding the information coming to the reporter. The speaker also noted that we all make mistakes, but we need to learn from those mistakes and make sure we do better next time. Maintaining transparency is essential, and fact-checking is crucial.
Overall, I learned a lot at this conference about reporting, leading, and taking care of myself as a journalist. Though these are only a few of the things I learned, I have a whole notebook full of information and notes about ways to be better.
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