Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - November/December 2012 - (Page 25)

own navigation of the experience. Many of these forms will coexist or come together in new ways, such as in my Kindle books that can talk to me or have interactive graphics embedded in them. The experience is changing, but the underlying elements are similar. is our understanding of news compromised when we rely on digital media? The immediacy of digital media means that the news is often fuzzy and incomplete, even as we’re reporting it. But when you print a summary of the news the next morning—or a week or a month later, depending on the publication—you can provide an illusion of completeness. Following a breaking news story on a platform like Twitter, you get the immediate responses of people at the scene. Watching a story unfolding in real time almost feels more viscerally real to me than reading a summary after the fact. There’s a famous New York Times front page dated April 16, 1912: “Titanic Sinks Four Hours after Hitting Iceberg. Eight-hundred and Sixty-six Rescued by Carpathia. Probably 1,250 Perish.” It’s the story they put in the history books. But in the previous day’s edition, the news was just reaching New York that something had happened to the Titanic. They were trying—at deadline, with the presses turning—to tell people not what happened, but what was happening. It said, “New Liner Titanic Hits an Iceberg. Sinking by the Bow at Midnight. Last Wireless at 12:27 a.m. Blurred.” The article has a kind of tick-tock sense, reflecting reports from a radio listening post in Newfoundland. It’s like reading a Twitter feed from 1912. I don’t think either edition of The Times is more or less valid, but one depicts history while it’s happening. accounts from people on the ground. Because those people leave a digital trail, we can confirm that they are who they say they are and where they say they were. We can learn about their credentials, expertise, and previous experiences, allowing us to find sources in a way and at a speed that we never could before. It’s a great countervailing force to journalism’s habit of relying on the same old sources, and when you can search a world full of blather and find hidden pockets of deep expertise, that’s incredible. When the Curiosity Rover arrived on Mars recently, you could watch the people in Mission Control talk amongst themselves and with their families via Twitter. They described what they were seeing and what the images meant to them, talking not only among themselves, but also with the media and the whole world that was watching what they were doing, as it was happening. Who wouldn’t have wanted to have that dialogue with the people who were working at Mission Control during the Apollo 11 landing? That conversation is lost to history. This one is available on my iPhone. The upheaval that mobile has brought to online journalism is as exciting as the early pioneering days of the mid to late ’90s were. Everybody’s inventing new things continuously. How do you decide when you should jump into a new venue like Facebook, twitter, or tumblr? You have to see what it’s capable of. Sometimes it takes awhile to figure out if it’s worth it. I remember when I first heard about Twitter, thinking, “That sounds absurd. Why would I ever do that, or want to read what anyone else had to say there?” But when people I was covering began using it to exchange information and resources with colleagues around the world, I realized that it was like attending an ongoing convention or eavesdropping on a table of fascinating people. If you could find the right conversation to follow or join, you suddenly had access to this information you wouldn’t have otherwise. What do you see as the biggest challenge in digital journalism? The upheaval that mobile has brought to online journalism is as exciting as the early pioneering days of the mid to late ’90s were. Everybody’s inventing new things continuously. We’re all trying to keep up with each other and figure out what the audience actually wants and needs. How can we create digital stories and digital experiences that work as well on an iPhone-sized screen as they do on a tablet, laptop, or 50-inch TV set that’s plugged into the Internet? The ability to create stories that work on all of those diﬀerent forms at the same time takes a lot of imagination. What skills will future journalists need? You have to be inherently curious and relentlessly open-minded, both about the people you’re interested in writing about and the means they use to communicate with each other. I watch my teenage nephews play video games with their friends over Internet connections while carrying on real-time conversations. They’re doing things with hand controllers that I can’t possibly imagine keeping up with. It’s like watching a master guitar player. I look at that experience that is so innate and native to them and realize that something like that is how people will get news in the not-toodistant future. It’s going to take a new generation of storytellers to figure out how to do the news properly for my nephews. How has social media improved journalism? When there’s an earthquake, you can get immediate firsthand www.cty.jhu.edu/imagine imagine 25 http://www.cty.jhu.edu/imagine

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - November/December 2012

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - November/december 2012
Contents
Big Picture
In My Own Words
Well of Dreams
Making History Personal
A World Full of Stories
The Month of Writing Dangerously
Japan Adventures
Storytelling 2.0
On the Frontline of Digital Journalism
Once Upon a Summer
Awakening the Storyteller
Selected Opportunities & Resources
On the Doorstep of Discovery
When You’re Ready to Do Research
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - November/December 2012