Watch a horrible mistake unfold, and facepalm with me.
We don’t have to be first. My fellow journalists may be going into convulsions as I say that, but it’s true. We don’t. People are sick of that. It means nothing, in this age when information is almost instantaneous, and first means little more to an audience than a few seconds. Audiences care about presentation, about snappy writing, about looks and sound and branding, about reliability. Continue reading
I got an instant message from one of the young writers in the newsroom yesterday (Saturday).
This one will tear your heart out, she wrote, sending me a cut of a boy, born less than a month after 9/11, speaking in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Saturday — a message to his firefighter father who died on that terrible day. Patrick Mate Lyon told that packed church, and all the cameras and microphones and pens taking notes he wished he could have known his dad. Continue reading