Hey Scholars,
Our question this week deals with relying on the Internet as a source of information for your stories. We heard all the cautions during orientation, but sometimes, especially on deadline, those cautions might be all too easy to ignore.
So I’d like to know: Who has a tale of relying on information gleaned from the Internet — and either got burned by it, or ultimately regretted it and would do things differently next time, or felt relief that you didn’t get burned but know now how easily you could have been?
If this has not happened to you, please describe one instance of how you further developed a piece of information you took from the Internet.
Due March 28 — thanks!
Colleen
Nicole Norfleet
03.31.10
This is a toughie. One of my goals (which I forgot to include in my list of goals!) has been to be more accurate. I had more than one mistake last internship so I wanted to make sure that I was more careful in my reporting and editing.
I remember a story I did at my college newspaper a long time ago. We had just launched a tech page, and because I was a girl and I like video games, I was seen as the tech/geek guru. I happily embraced this title and in my first or second story for the page, I wrote an article comparing the new PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. It was a huge story with graphics and everything. I was very proud of myself and showed it off to people that day.
I was in the computer lab and saw a guy reading it. Wanting to prove that I was hip, I told him I wrote it, and I waited for some praise or at least an invite up to his dorm to play Final Fantasy. “You got this wrong,” he said. I don’t know if black people can blush, but I know I did turn a different shade when I heard. he pointed to some fact that I had idiotically taken from an online forum of people discussing the pros and cons of the gaming systems. I wanted the world to swallow me up.
To make matters worse, he hadn’t been the only to notice. The thing is when you write geek stories, there are always real geeks that no way more than you. It was a humbling experience. I learned great lessons early about online sourcing, tech reporting and even just keeping my journo ego in check lol.
Lisa Song
03.31.10
At HCN, our print stories go through weeks of edits, so there’s plenty of time for factchecking. That doesn’t mean we don’t rely on the internet, but it gives us time to double check everything that doesn’t come from a straight source. Our blogs are where internet mistakes take place. On my last blog, I wrote about the new documentary “Gasland.” Since I didn’t have time to watch it, I took my information from the official “Gasland” website. According to the site, the documentary was filmed in the “Catskills/Poconos region of upstate New York and Pennsylvania.” On the blog, I shortened it to “Caskills of Pennsylvania” and got called out on it. There’s some debate about the finer points of geography in that region, but the point is that I took a shortcut at the end of the day, and no one noticed except for a reader. So yeah, that’s the last time I’ll do anything like that…
Kiah Haslett
04.05.10
I guess I’m lucky in that I haven’t been mislead by the internet yet, so I can only comment on further developing information. A big thing the internet gives you is data and usually without context.
http://www.chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2010/03/unemployment-shoots-up-in-peoria-decatur.html
Here’s a link to a little blurb I did using data and some context. The data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but my editor wanted to know why these particular cities. So I did some reporting. I found out it wasn’t just the economy in general, but a particular employer. And that the employer was calling people back.
The internet is also great for finding sources. That’s how I found the person from the EDC who was quoted in the story. Not being from IL or knowing how this municipal government is organized, I started with the Better Business Bureau and each town’s mayor office and asked if they knew someone who could talk about it. I wound up at the EDC, a short quote, some data, a couple hundred words and a short breaking business blog post.