Week 12: Inside the newspaper

Posted on October 8th, 2007 by kmburb.
Categories: Uncategorized.

This week I have been doing work experience at the Herald & Weekly Times. I spent a day with the photographers and it was interesting to learn a bit more about how technology has changed their job.

They all use digital cameras now, so the old darkrooms have been removed. When they are out on a few jobs and don’t have time to back to the office, they load the photos onto their laptop and email them back. This means images can instantly be loaded onto the website. Their news website is still not making them money, but they are trying to figure out ways that it can.

In the newsroom itself, they are constantly on the net searching for updates to breaking stories and look at other sites for new stories. I also saw some journalists search a Myspace website for pictures and information about a girl who is rumoured to be the girlfriend of a sports star.

All the journalists are meant to be getting blackberries next year, so they can instantly email stories back to the office and to the website if they are out on the road.
When there was a train accident they also used pictures from witnesses who had taken photos on their mobile phones.

So there are aspects of the “changing newsroom” that we have looked at over this semester, but in many ways it seems that they are still catching up and are still developing their online content. Actually the fact that they are only just now building a dedicated office area for the online department shows that it is still something they are adapting to and integrating into their media system.

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