On Wednesday, October 27th, The Chimes online editors—Elizabeth Sallie and Pattie Diaz—were kind enough to create a special meeting for students from Foundations of Journalism, myself included. They talked about news in print versus the online edition and the process of putting articles online, as well as allowing us to ask questions and see how they work. I am more drawn to working in the online media world than in print, so this opportunity opened me up to a lot of information.
Elizabeth first talked with us about online versus print media. We discussed additional benefits to working online. Online allows reads to instantly comment on articles, as well as cross-reference information using other sites. Additional links can be included to allow the reader more information, which will lead to more trust from the reader. The ability to break stories online and include additional visual media—such as slideshows—are two advantages The Chimes put to use this week with the car accident that occurred on Tuesday night.
I learned a lot about how stories must be adapted for the online audience. I realized that I observe the qualities of an online story frequently but have never given much thought as to why they are formatted as such. Online stories must be simple and straightforward, because it is easy for a user to lose interest and click to a new page. Information must be delivered in short paragraphs so that the reader does not become visually bogged down. Also, headlines need to be clear rather than clever, because the reader must never feel like they were deceived or you will lose that person’s trust.
Elizabeth shared some possible changes that may take place in The Chimes over time. For the online version, she hopes that more attraction will be grained through social networking sites. Right now, the top two sites that people access The Chime through are google and facebook. Elizabeth expressed that she also hopes that The Chimes will gain more respect and be at the front of people’s minds when they think of news. Also, people may gain a web-first mentality when it comes to accessing the Chimes for such news. She noted that campus newspapers are unique, though, because they have a built-in audience. Therefore, the print edition is less likely to become obsolete than other types of papers.
Given that Elizabeth and Pattie are the only two online editors, they said that they generally expect to put in four to five hours of work the night before the print edition of the paper comes out. In a week, they usually put in fifteen to twenty hours. Each story they are given must be broken down into smaller paragraphs and coded for online. For sports articles, they link the names of the players that are mentioned to their online sports profiles.
Learning about The Chimes online furthered my desire to work with online media. I have always loved technology, and I think that there are far more possibilities to explore with it. I had been considering changing my math emphasis from computer science to applied mathematics, but now I may not do that. After talking to Elizabeth—who is adding a minor in computer science—I realized that there would be a lot of value in having that background. Applied math would give me experience in probability and statistics, however, which could also be beneficial in journalism. Thus, I have a lot of possibilities to consider. All in all, I found learning about the online version of The Chimes to be beneficial, and it certainly expanded my understanding of the work required for an online media source to run well.
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